Kamen Rider Rekka
by pyrorynox
Summary: Ryou Okibi, mild mannered college student. Quiet and shy, he is usually the butt of everyone's jokes. Then one night he comes across a beast dragging a corpse, but finds a belt that changes his life forever. This is the birth of Rekka.
1. Flight of the Phoenix

**After who knows how long since I first released the preview in the early chapters of Path of the Chosen, Kamen Rider Rekka chapter 1 has finally been completed. Um, for now anyway. The last little part of it was really kind of rushed so I'm gonna have to go back and change a few things and then repost it later on, but I just really wanted to finally get this posted. Anyway, for those of you who are readers of my Digimon fic, Path of the Chosen, that was mentioned above I said in an apology that I was going through some things and had just started college. Graphic Design is a pain, but who knows? Maybe you'll see some of my characters in an actually digimon series someday. Anyway, I'm gonna get back on that soon so I hope none of you are too antsy about that. For those of you who are reading anything of mine for the first time, ignore the talk about Digimon unless you're maybe interested in reading it. On a side note, I kept up with Kamen Rider W/Double until its end about three weeks ago, and I have to say that it was a masterpiece. I cried when Philip died and couldn't stop smiling when he showed up last epiosde. And Shotarou showed me that its okay to be half-boiled, while looking like a badass detective/superhero. I've enjoyed the first two episodes of OOO but it has a lot to live up to. As for this fic, I'll warn you now that this is a bit more violent than anything I've ever written. You'll see what I mean when you read but anyway-**

**Kumamon: STANLEY!**

**What the f-! *last word is muffled as Kumamon tackles me* Ow. My head.**

**Kumamon: How dare you not work on MY story for an entire summer! I should give you a Bear Fist to the skull!**

**Uh, there's enough of that kinda thing in this story as it is. For those of you who aren't familiar with my Digimon story, this is Kumamon, my main digimon.**

**Kumamon: I'm his first out of six digimon.**

**Rexmon: I'm his second.**

**Cubmon: grunts. *translation: I'm his third***

**What the heck? Cubmon, you haven't even shown up in my digimon fic yet. What are you doing here?**

**Cubmon: I'm Brooke's, your girlfriend's, favorite digimon. She's getting impatient.**

**O.o She's gonna kill me. Alright alright. I'll get to your part as soon as possible.**

**Rexmon: I'm here to wish you luck on your new story!**

**At least somebody cares. Anyway, please enjoy the first chapter everybody and hopefully I can make weekly updates to tie in with Kamen Rider's weekly episodes. Now, on with the story. Ready for the disclaimer everybody?**

**Kumamon: Wait! There's one more thing. This story and Digimon: Path of the Chosen are in the same universe. Meaning they live on the same earth, so be expecting crossovers or little tidbits that may be concerning things in the other story. Now we can do the disclaimer.**

**Disclaimer: Pyrorynox does not own Kamen Rider, but he does like to cry out "HENSHIN!"**

"_Pant pant pant" _A figure shrouded by the shadows of the tall buildings around him ran in a terror driven haste. "I'm gonna die! It's gonna kill me!"

A voice from really close by scoffed at his cowardice as he hid behind a dumpster to rest his aching lungs. It spoke, with a surprisingly feminine voice. "Why do you run from the beast when you have the power to stop it? I have loaned you my power, now use it!"

The figure behind the dumpster was about to make a frustrated retort to the disembodied voice but a sudden heavy sounding footstep made him change his mind. _"No, I can't let it get me. Maybe if I just sit here and don't make a sound it'll just leave me alone and I can find a way to put all of this behind me."_ He held his breath and got as close to the dumpster as humanly possible.

His breath hitched in his throat as he heard the footsteps come closer. He heard whatever it was nearby sniff the air hard, as if trying to get a whiff of his scent as it was almost upon his hiding place. He took a chance and looked up, just as what looked like a snout peeked a little bit over the top of the dumpster. He watched with bated breath as its considerably large nostrils expanded and snorted. But, to his relief, the thing gave one last frustrated snort before backing off. He waited until he heard it's footsteps fade away before he finally released his breath. "I'm saved. Good thing too, cause it's a bit harder to breath in this helmet. Can I de-henshin now, you accursed bird?"

The voice from before spoke up again, with a hint of irritation. "You should have just stood your ground and fought it. That armor you're wearing has more than enough power to defeat it." Two tiny, glowing orbs suddenly appeared near the figure's waistline the floated away from him. "But considering your poor performance, it may be best that we retreat for now. I'll take a look and see if it's safe for you to come out." The two orbs floated up above the dumpster and in the dim light a small bird shape could be made out, the two orbs revealed to be eyes.

"Do you see anything?"

"No. I believe he's gone. You should go ahead and transform back so we can get back to the lab." The bird floated up higher as the figure stood up and was about to do something when a bit of debris from above crumbled onto his head.

"What the?" he started as he looked up.

The bird's eyes widened as it looked up towards the roof of the building. "MOVE NOW!"

The figure suddenly jumped away from the dumpster as a something large landed on the dumpster and crushed it like tin foil. A deep, gruff voice emitted from the large being as it stepped down from the crushed dumpster. "You thought you could hide from me? Well I could smell your human stench from a mile away. Now, time to die!" The large thing bent over the demolished dumpster and easily lifted it over his head before launching it at the figure in the armor.

The armored figure flipped over the dumpster and ran out of the alley in a panic, right into traffic. Cars swerved around him as he struggled to get as far away from the thing as he could. He chanced a look back and could see the thing jumping from car to car in an attempt to catch up with him. The headlights from the vehicles shone on the thing's bull like body, it's horns gleaming in the light. The bird flew overhead, trying to keep them both in sight but it was taking up a lot of it's energy. "This will not end well. At this rate I'll need another human to wear the suit, and there aren't that many humans that can handle it's power."

The figure in the suit stopped for a second to catch his breath then turned at the sound of a loud car horn. He jumped over the oncoming car in a great leap, only to be tackled in mid air by the bull creature. They landed on the other side of the street and rolled into another alley before the bull creature threw the suited man away from him, into a brick wall.

He slumped to the ground as the monster stalked over to him and towered over its prey. "Any last words, human?"

Before the figure could speak the belt that was around his waist started to spark. He suddenly let out an agonizing scream before his body erupted into crimson flames. The monster had to shield his eyes from the intense light the flames gave off. When the light finally died down all that could be seen was a charred corpse. The bull monster turned it's nose away from the smell of burnt flesh and began to walk away. "Disgusting humans. Can't even handle a bit of power and always leave a stench when they die."

As it walked off, the bird floated overhead, a large belt clutched in it's tiny talons. "I guess that human couldn't handle the power either. It's a good thing I got the belt before Mintauros could get his hands on it. But if I can't find a human who can actually handle the power then there's no point anyway. This world and humanity will be doomed of extinction." And with that the bird flew into the night sky, as the sounds of police sirens could be heard approaching the scene.

…...

_"Gonna make it."_

A hallway full of college students. They all looked at the strange young man heavily dressed in blue jeans and a large coat as he ran down the hallway at breakneck speed with arms filled with text books.

_"Gonna make it!"_

The young man suddenly turned a corner and nearly knocked over a couple as they walked to class together. "Hey watch it, weirdo!" shouted the girlfriend to the young man as rounded another corner. "Geez. How did that guy even get into this school?"

_"GONNA MAKE IT!"_

He saw his destination just a few yards ahead of him. _"I MADE IT!"_ Just as he thought that to himself, a foot appeared in his path. With no time to stop he tripped over it just as the door to the room closed and he flew face first into it , causing a loud 'thud' to be heard by the students inside as the sound of a bell suddenly sounded around the entire campus.

The students inside the classroom looked to the door to see the young man's face pressed up against it and one student sighed as the youngster's face slid comically down the door's window until it was out of sight. "Ryou. What am I gonna do with you?"

The professor of the class got up from his desk and opened the door, and the young man, Ryou, fell into the class.

"I didn't make it," said Ryou weakly.

The professor rolled his eyes and helped the weary student to his feet and helped to dust him off. "Don't worry about it, Mr. Okibi. I saw that student put her foot out in front of you right before you hit that door, so I won't count you late. You have to remember to be more careful though."

Ryou nodded to the professor. "Yes, sensei." He realized his mistake as his professor made a face at the word 'sensei'. "Um, I mean sorry, Dr. Mims."

"It's alright, Ryou. Now, if you would please take a seat," said the professor as he walked back to his desk. Ryou nodded and slowly walked up the steps of the large classroom to a seat beside a handsome young man of about twenty years of age with messy, brown hair. He had a very pronounced jawline and despite the thick jeans and sweater he was wearing during the winter, his muscular body could definitely be seen.

"Yo, Ryou. You really cut it close there. What happened this time?"

Ryou took the scarf that was around his neck and put it underneath his desk as he unzipped his overly large coat. He looked like he was dressed to go to the north pole. "Well, you know how things are. Some people don't exactly like me and someone stole my scooter," he said like it was the most normal thing in the world.

The handsome young man mentally slapped his forehead as he looked at his friend in pity. "Ryou, somebody stole your scooter again? You get picked on all the time, so when are you gonna do something about it and stand up for yourself?"

Ryou sighed in the 'you're right' kind of fashion and looked at his friend. "Nick. I'm not sure if you've noticed or not, but I'm not exactly like everyone else."

His buddy, Nick, looked closely at Ryou. "Nah. I don't see it. You look normal to me."

Ryou sighed in exasperation. "Nick."

"I know. I know. It's because you're Japanese American and you're deeply rooted in those traditions. It's no big deal to me and you know that."

"And that's why you're my only friend. You're more opened minded than most people and you have a kind heart."

Nick rubbed the back of his head sheepishly in embarrassment. "Well I'm not all that. But I appreciate the compliments all the same." He looked down to see that Dr. Mims was lecturing while the two boys had been conversing. "Oh, man. We need to pay attention if we're gonna pass this class."

Ryou smiled at his best and only friend as he pulled out his books. "Hai."

…...

Ryou Okibi was as far from popular as a twenty year old could get. All his life he had been the butt of people's jokes, the kid that was slammed and locked into lockers, or the little boy that got the daily "atomic wedgie". But did he ever do anything to actually deserve such treatment? Of course not, just like most other children who are picked on as children. He was just a bit different than the rest of the students he had gone to school with over the course of his life. He always wore heavy clothes and had long hair that covered most of his face, the only thing that was actually visible most of the time was his mouth.

His heritage was that of a Japanese American, his father being an immigrant from Japan and his mother being a Caucasian from southern Colorado. The two had hit it off somehow and gotten married, resulting in Ryou Okibi being brought into the world. But more about all that later.

Ryou and Nick filed out of their classroom as the day's classes for them were finally done. With books in hand, Ryou happily walked beside his best friend as they prepared to take short break before going to their separate dorm rooms and starting on their mountains of homework that usually came with the college life style.

"I swear they should call Colorado State the busiest University in the country. It's a wonder none of us have cracked under the weight of all these books and everything."

Ryou looked down at his books and frowned. "Oh come on, the homework isn't that bad."

"This coming from the genius," said Nick sarcastically. "You're close to the top of the class and you make it look easy."

Ryou pulled the front of his scarf up to his nose to hide the blush that threatened to erupt on his face. "I'm not that smart. I just know how to listen and take good notes."

"Psh. And I'm the not constantly surrounded by girls wanting me to impregnate them."

"Nick! You shouldn't say things like that," said Ryou with a slight frown.

"Well you can't deny that it's not true. I mean look at them, staring at me with their lustful eyes. It's enough to make you wanna crawl in a corner and hide."

Ryou looked around as saw that Nick indeed had a point. The women around them were gazing at his older friend as if he had a target on his chest that said "prime steak" and they were a bunch of starving wolves. It would've been too much for any normal man, but fortunately Nick was more than man enough for the likes of these women. Or so he thought.

"Hey Nicky-poo!" came a shrieking voice as a hand suddenly found itself on Nick's shoulder.

"AHHH!" With a scream, the young all-American jumped about a foot in the air and took off down the hallway.

Ryou looked on with an amazed look on his face as his best friend easily broke the school's track record. "Sugoi! I've never seen Nick run so fast before! Wait." He slowly looked down to see that in his haste to get away from the assailant he had forgotten his books and things. "Oh no. NICK! WAIT A MINUTE!" But it was too late as his friend had already turn the corner and disappeared from sight. "Kuso." Ryou swore as he reluctantly picked up Nick's books and prepared to carry them. That is until he felt a tug on them. "What the?"

He looked up to see a young woman with her hands on Nick's books. She was tall for a woman her age, standing at about 5'7''. She had a borderline petite figure with light brown eyes and short brown hair. Ryou recognized her as one of the many girls that made their affection for Nick known throughout the campus. "Why hello, Ryou," the young lady said with a seemingly cheerful smile as she held a rather strong grip on Nick's books.

Ryou looked at her skeptically before lightly tugging on the books to get them out of her grasp. When he found that she wouldn't let go he looked at her and frowned. Looking down to avoid eye contact he asked quietly, "Um, Bethany, I was gonna bring these back to Nick, so if you don't mind?" He tried again to pull the books out of Bethany's hands as politely as he could but the smile that had adorned the girl's face had suddenly been replace with a scowl.

"Actually I do mind, _weirdo_." The emphasis on that one word had the desired effect as Ryou visibly flinched and his grip on the books slackened slightly. "That's what I thought. So why don't you just let me take these off your hands and you go about your way." It was more of an order than a question but that was the kind of woman Bethany Aldridge was. She was one of the "mean girls" of the college, somebody of the popular crowd who used her status to look down on others. With the way she treated people though it was a wonder as to why she was so popular. Maybe it was the way she seemed to intimidate people without really trying hard. She was member of many clubs, but the one she was the most into was the "Nick Kennington Fanclub", which she was president of. They made it their business to know where Nick was at all times, who he was with, to have someone watching him at all hours of the day. All the stalking creeped Nick out so he was easily spooked, leading into his running away a few seconds before.

Ryou quickly tightened his grip on the books and lightly tugged them away from Bethany while being polite as possible. "Gomen, but knowing Nick he's gone back to our dorm room to hide, I mean rest, and I actually have a key. So I think it would be best if I got these back to him."

The girl in question put her hands on her hips and looked at him with such dislike that it almost physically hurt. "Fine. I'll _let _you give him his belongings this time, but you might wanna watch your back from now on. By the way, nice fall earlier." She snickered as she turned around and walked back to her other stalker friends.

Ryou couldn't help but sigh as she walked away. Despite the fact that she was so uppity he still thought she was a beautiful young lady. It was just too bad that she didn't have the attitude to match. "It's not like she'd ever notice me, even if she was the nicest person in the world. At least she wouldn't trip for a laugh if she were nice." And with that he walked the opposite direction, towards his dorm.

…...

As Ryou walked back towards the dorm he found himself walking behind young women, a short brunette and a much taller brunette, who were going in the same direction as he was. Being the quiet person that he was he decided to just stay where he was and avoid coming into contact with them by walking passed them. He was uninterested in them like he was uninterested in most things, but something one of them said caught his ear.

"Did you read the paper this morning, mandy? There was another dead body found downtown last night. According to the paper it was burned up pretty bad." said the taller girl.

The shorter girl, mandy, visibly trembled at the grim news. "That's crazy, Chrissy. The amount of people being found dead in the city over the past few months has been getting higher and higher: although, this is the first time I've heard of anyone getting burned. Have any other people been found like that?"

Chrissy shook his head. "Nope, most of the bodies have been found mutilated, like something tore them apart. The police haven't had any progress in finding any clues or suspects. The victims have been too random for them to find any connections between the victims. They're stumped. Even the FBI has been called in but they're not doing much better."

Ryou listened with much interest at their conversation without them noticing. He had excellent hearing and could focus on everything a person said, which is why he was doing so well in class. He had heard about the recent murders, as had everyone else in the city. About three months ago a young girl was found in an abandoned part of town, her body roughed up and seemingly tossed aside by-something. For someone to have inflict so much injury to a body before dying they would've had to be stronger than a normal human. And then there were the rumors, rumors from people who claimed to be eyewitnesses of the murders. They all claimed to have seen monsters around the scene of the murders, or just random sightings around the city. This claims seemed outlandish, but more and more people were starting to turn to the superstitious like of thinking.

"YO RYOU!" He was still walking behind the girls when he heard his name being called by a familiar voice. He and the two girls that in front of him stopped walking and turned around to the sound of the voice. The two girls nearly jumped out of their skin when they realized that Ryou was only a few feet away from them, and the two wondered just how long he had been back there. But they quickly forgot what they were thinking about as Ryou's best and only friend, Nick Kennington, came walking up, pulling along a very beat up riding scooter.

Ryou ran up to him and quickly took his scooter, but not before nodding to Nick. "I'm glad you found it for me, Nick. I was wondering if I was gonna get it back this time."

"It was no problem, buddy. All I had to do was ask for it. Oh the perks of being popular."

Ryou gave an sweatdrop like expression at his friend's apparent cockiness. "Nick, I thought you hated the whole popularity thing since people only like you for your looks and don't even try to get to know you?"

"True, but its because of my popularity that I can help some people out when they need it. Like how I got your scooter back from the guys that took it. Besides, if they didn't give it to me then they would've probably had to deal with my rabid fangirls. They strike terror into anybody that doesn't do what I ask. They even scare the crap out of me."

Ryou laughed sheepishly. He had never had the "pleasure" of having fangirls, and hopefully he'd never have to. Then he remembered that he had been looking for Nick to give him something that every college student needed to survive in college. "Hey, Nick, you left these outside of Dr. Mims's classroom when Bethany scared you."

Nick gratefully took the books back from Ryou and nodded his thanks. "I wasn't actually in any hurry to get these back because I was sure that Bethany would get them and use them as an excuse to get into the dorm, which is why I'm not there now. But always trust my bro to keep my virginity safe for another day."

"Um, sure. Well anyway, maybe we should get-" he stopped as he turned around and saw Chrissy and Mandi staring at Nick with hearts in their eyes. "going."

Nick chuckled nervously before backing away slowly. "Um, Ryou, I think I'm gonna head back to the dorm and get started on my homework. You mind taking your scooter and going to get some pizza or something? And try not to get killed. It's really dangerous out there."

"Sure, but I think you're the one that better be running right about now." Before he even got the last word out, Nick had already dashed away from the area in a cloud of cold dust. With their object of affection suddenly gone, the two normally intelligent girls returned to normal.

"Um, what just happened, Chrissy?" asked the younger girl as she blinked.

"I don't know, sis, but that creepy guy is still here." she replied, pointed accusingly at Ryou.

Ryou bowed in disgrace and quickly climbed on his motor scooter, driving away, but not before giving a quick and sad sounding "I'm sorry". The two girls shrugged their shoulders as he drove away, not really sure what just happened but happy the "creepy" guy was gone.

…...

Night was beginning to fall and Ryou was returning a little later than he had expected. His old scooter had broken down yet again and he had to tinker with it before it was revived and he finally got the pizza. While most people around the campus thought that his scooter had been busted up by the people that constantly stole it, it had actually been given to him that way by his father who was the previous owner of the scooter. Ryou's father, Takeshi Okibi, had been in a scooter gang in his younger days. Not as threatening as a motorcycle gang, but his father was still a man to feared back when he was in his prime. In Ryou's case, it got him from point a to b, but it often broke down on the way. Ryou thought it was high time he got a new ride, too bad he couldn't afford one at the moment.

It was at that moment that a much newer, pink scooter pulled up beside him at a red light. He turned his head to look at the rider and gasped in surprise.

"Hard to believe that you can see where you're going with all that hair in front of your eyes weirdo." said Bethany with a snide rudeness to her voice.

Ryou quickly turned away before she could see the blush that had adorned his face. "B-bethany, what are you doing here?" he said quietly, but loud enough for her to hear.

"Oh I just thought that Nick might be hungry so I went to get him some pizza, but unfortunately I was short on cash, so I'll be taking your's instead."

The light turned green in that instant as Bethany suddenly snatched the pizza away and drove off towards downtown. "BETHANY! GIVE THAT BACK!" he shouted as he started to give chase.

The insane stalker -ahem- I mean young lady took Ryou around in circles as he struggled to get back the pizza. She laughed maniacally as he would come within a inch from grabbing it only for her to snatch it away. She was toying with him, just for the fun of it. Until she saw something fly through the air out of the corner of her eye. She looked up and saw a small red and yellow bird fly above her at a high speed. _"Wow, I've never seen a bird like that before. And it's really gunning it too."_

"BETHANY! WATCH OUT FOR THAT POLE!"

"What?" Her attention went back to where she was driving, only a few feet from a telephone pole. She slammed on her brakes hard and slowed her scooter down considerably, but still slammed into the pole really hard. She was thrown off of the scooter but because she slowed down before she hit the pole she only rolled across the ground a few feet.

Ryou quickly slowed his scooter to a stop and ran over to where the girl was slowly getting up. "Are you alright?" he asked as he tried to take her hand and help her up. She slapped his hand away angrily and got up on her own.

"Yeah, no thanks to you."

"But if I hadn't have warned you then you would've hit that pole at full speed. Who knows how badly injured you would've been had that happened." He had a lot of concern in his voice, but she must've either not heard it or just ignored it because she looked at him with an angry expression on her face.

"Well because of you, Nick's pizza is ruined." Ryou looked towards Bethany's trashed scooter and noticed all the of the pizza splattered all over the concrete.

"Just my luck. Half that pizza was supposed to be mine. Guess we'll just have to have take-out again." he said with a frown.

Hearing that some of the pizza was actually his made the already angry Bethany even more angry than before. "How dare you! You selfish pig, how could you lay claim to any of my nicky-poo's pizza!" the asked angrily as Ryou looked at their surroundings.

"Um, I really don't think that's important right now. Do you realize that we're in the demolished district of the city? This is where a lot of those murders that have been happening recently occurred. We should leave right away."

Bethany grabbed Ryou by his scarf and shook him roughly. "You listen here and you listen good. You don't order me around. Got it? Try that again, and I'll make sure you regret it." As she was shaking him, Ryou could hear footsteps coming in their direction. Fearing it was someone dangerous he grabbed Bethany's wrists and quickly pulled her behind a building. "What are you doing! Listen, I was just kidding about ordering me around! Just please don't rape me!"

Ryou blushed at her words. He wasn't the kind of person to think of women inappropriately and even the through of kissing a girl embarrassed him. "Ano, I didn't any intention of doing anything like that." he said shyly. "But you have to be quiet. I heard some footsteps and it may not be somebody friendly."

Bethany quickly put her hands over her mouth and tried not to make a sound. Now that it was quieter Bethany could now hear the footsteps as well. They sounded really heavy, like they belonged really big. Ryou chanced a look around the corner but quickly pulled his head back. He was sweating, which was impossible in the cold January weather. He didn't dare breathe.

Even though Bethany couldn't see his eyes because of all of his hair, she could tell that something wasn't right. Ignoring every instinct that told her not to look, she turned and peeked around the corner to where she could see what was over there with her left eye. What she say nearly made her scream, but Ryou quickly covered her mouth as he had peeked out around the corner again.

Even though they were staring right at it they couldn't believe what they were seeing. There, standing about thirty feet away in plain sight, was a minotaur. From where they were standing they couldn't see it in detail, but could definitely make out its bull like feet and semi-humanoid upper body. And they could tell it was much larger than a normal human but a few feet. But what really scared them was the fact that in it's large hand was a human being dragged by the leg. Based on the way the body was unmoving it was either unconscious or worse, dead. But considering the long path of blood that trailed behind it, it was safe to say that it was probably the latter.

The minotaur started moving again, towards a three story warehouse that looked rundown and abandoned, dragging the body mercilessly behind him.

The two college students quickly got back behind the corner of the building and finally let out their held breaths. Not a word was said for a full minute. Then finally, "Did we just see a minotaur?" Ryou asked.

"No, it was a cute little puppy dog that wasn't dragging a dead guy behind it! What do you think! So it really is a monster going around killing people!"

Ryou tugged on her arm, motioning that they needed to leave and in a hurry. "We have to leave and tell somebody about this or something! Let's go!"

Bethany snatched her arm away and gave Ryou a dirty look. "What did I tell you about bossing me around? I was kidding about the rape thing so don't get any ideas."

Ryou was starting to get frustrated. "Well what do you suppose we do then? Follow it?"

Bethany looked at him like he was crazy, but then smiled mischievously. "That's the first good idea you've had all night."

"Nani?"

"Cut the ching-chong stuff cause I don't speak it. Listen, you could go to the police but if you tell them that you saw a minotaur of all things then they'll think you're crazy, which you probably are based on how you look. But if I go in there after it and take pictures then they'll have to believe it. I'll be a hero and Nick Kennington will be so impressed he'll swoon over me." She had hearts in her eyes.

"You know, you remind me more and more of this girl named Sakura from an anime I watch. Wait, where are you going! Bethany!" he hissed, but he was too late. Bethany had already left the safety of the building was running over the abandoned warehouse. Ryou slapped his forehead and slid his hand down his face. "I know I'm gonna regret this, but I can't just let her go in there alone. Hey! Wait up!" He too left from his hiding place and headed after her.

…...

Ryou and Bethany carefully stepped over the broken glass as they walked through the abandoned warehouse.

"I can't believe I got stuck hanging around with a weirdo like you. Why couldn't it be Nick? He would be much more useful in a situation like this."

Ryou frowned at being told just how strange and useless he was. "I'm sorry I'm not cool like other people, but I couldn't just let you go in there alone. I mean, we saw a _monster_. I'm pretty sure you're not exactly in the safest place. Besides, Nick has other things to do right now. Such as homework, which is what we should be doing. Let's just go."

Bethany stopped walking and got right in Ryou's face. "Listen, you coward. I'm not sure why Nick of all people talks to you, but I'm gonna tell you something right now. I don't like you. Nobody else likes you either. You're the joke of the college campus. You're always wearing all those heavy looking clothes and we can never see anything above your nose because of all that hair." Her hand suddenly shot out and roughly moved Ryou's bangs from in front of his eyes.

"What are you doing!" he shouted. He blinked when he didn't get an answer. She was staring at his eyes. "What is it?"

She was looking at him with a surprised expression on her face and her mouth slightly agape. "Wow, your eyes are beautiful." Indeed, she had expected him to be cross-eyed, or have different colored eyes, but right now she was staring into the most beautiful green eyes she had ever seen. They held an innocence she had never seen in another person.

"Bethany, you're scaring me."

Bethany suddenly snapped out of her trance and glared at him. "So maybe you have kinda cute eyes, but you're still a creepy weirdo."

"Gomen," Ryou said as his hair fell down again over his eyes.

They continued to search around the place and decided to split up. Ryou went to the upper floor and searched room after room, but all he found was more broken glass. He was about to give up and go to find Bethany, but stopped in his tracks as he suddenly saw a light coming from a room down the hall. He tiptoed his way over to the door and carefully pushed it open.

He stuck his head in the door, but immediately wished he hadn't. This room had light, a bright one to be exact. Even with all the hair covering his eyes he still had to put his hand up in front of his face to block out the immense light that was currently blinding him. As his eyes got adjusted to the brightness of the room, he opened eyes little by little. This room seemed much newer than all the other ones. The fact that it had light had been surprising enough. It was a pure white room with a tall pedestal in the middle. As he slowly approached it, he noticed there was a dancing flame on top of it.

"That's really odd. I wonder who put all of this together." As he reached out to feel the heat of the flame it suddenly turned into a high tech belt which fell to the floor in front of his feet.

"Woah! What was that?" He bent down and slowly picked up the belt. It was mostly red, with yellow flames etched in its surface. At what he thought was the front of the belt was an empty slot shaped like a pair of wings. "It seems like this is missing something."

"RYOU!" came a sudden scream. A second later a sound akin to a bomb erupted through the entirety of the warehouse.

"Bethany!" Ryou ran out of the room with belt in hand, unaware that something was now fluttering the air, right over his head.

"So the belt showed it's true form to that human. That means he may be compatible with it, but it's never reacted to such a young human before. I wonder if he could handle its power, my power." and with that it flew after Ryou.

…...

Bethany hid behind a crate as the minotaur monster smashed the crates around him in an attempt to find her. He gave a loud, bull-like roar before charging through about a dozen large crates. Bethany thanked her lucky stars that it didn't charge in her direction.

**"Come out little human. I'll eventually sniff you out anyway."** It said in a threatening, almost teasing manner. It lifted up a crate and threw it in Bethany's direction, if only by random guess. She saw it coming her way and quickly ran to another crate away from where she was just as the two crates collided and smashed to splinters. Luckily the monster didn't see her, but she wasn't sure how long her good luck would last.

"_How did I get into this situation in the first place?" _she thought to herself. "_oh yeah. I remember now."_

…...

_Bethany watched as Ryou, or "weirdo" as she liked to call him, headed up the stairs to check __the upper floors. She took it upon herself to do the lower floor, since she wouldn't have to do as much work. Oh but how she still hated to be her right now, and she never thought she'd ever think that. It may have been her idea to get "proof" that it was indeed a monster committing the town murders, but the fact that she was looking for a monster was insane._

_ Worst of all, she was stuck with Ryou Okibi. How much worse could her night get? She didn't like the guy at all. She thought he was the weirdest looking kid she had ever laid eyes on. He wore so many clothes he looked like he was living in the north pole and not Colorado. Sure, it was cold in Colorado, but not THAT cold. Because of all the clothes they weighed him down and it looked like he was hunched over all the time. He was always so silent, and he would just walk behind people and follow them. He had so much hair that it was surprising that he could see anything in front of his face. Nobody knew what he looked like above his mouth, until now anyway. She didn't even know he was Asian until she saw his eyes, but with a name like Ryou Okibi it should have been obvious._

_ But now she was searching from room to room trying to find a clue or something. The place had been trashed and looked like it had not been used for years. It was hard to figure out what kind of warehouse it even was. Her search bore no fruit until she heard a low moan come from the room she was headed towards. It was a little more clean than the rest of the place, if only a little. She stuck her head inside and took a quick glance around to make sure the coast was clear before entering._

_ The room was very messy, with boxes and equipment thrown around everywhere. There were various holes in the walls, like something had punched through them in anger. More than likely it was the minotaur monster she was now pursuing. She moved boxes around, searching for the source of the moaning. As she moved deeper into the room the moaning got louder and sounded more pain filled. Whoever was in the room was most obviously suffering worse and worse by the second. She eyed a forklift toward the rear of the room and walked cautiously to it, because it sounded the moaning was coming from its direction. She slowly peeked out behind it and almost screamed. She bit back what would have been a loud scream and walked closer to the newly discovered corpses that littered the area behind the forklift. There must have been close to two dozen and whoever killed all the people wasn't very picky. Various kinds of people's dead bodies littered the floor, an African American woman here, a Hispanic man there, but that wasn't the worst. Bethany felt herself throw up a little in her mouth as she peered at a little girl that didn't look any older than seven, but the girl's lifeless eyes held no innocence or wonder that children were known for. Her face was etched out into a terrified and tormenting scream that would probably haunt Bethany for the rest of her life. She may have been a mean girl, but only somebody who deserved to be in a padded cage would find this scene anything other than horrendous._

_ "It really is a monster," she said as a few tear fell from her eyes for the little girl, the moaning that she had initially searching temporally forgotten. She quickly remembered as the moan came again, from in the crowd of dead bodies! "There's somebody actually alive in there!" she searched around, looking for any kind of movement among the bodies. Her search was rewarded with a twitching hand close to the top of the pile. She silently thanked the heavens she didn't actually have to move any corpses as she very carefully pulled on the wrist that was attached to the hand and pulled the body free. The person's chest was covered in deep gashes, but said chest was very faintly moving up and down. She looked at him more closely now that she knew it wasn't just another dead body. He appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties, with a slender build and messy, bloodstained hair. She leaned down and took the person's pulse through his neck. His pulse was very faint, but kept up at a steady tempo. If she hurried and got him to a hospital there a small chance he could be saved. But first came first._

_ "Hey! Are you alright?" she said softly. She didn't want to startle the man, or whatever had killed all these people._

_ He opened his eyes slightly, the light from the room blinding him a bit. "Yes," he said faintly. "I think I'll live as long as that thing doesn't come back before I can get medical attention. But, ugh!" He tensed up a bit as a wave of pain hit him. Bethany almost started to panic, but he slowly calmed down. He saw the look of concern on her face but slowly put a weak hand on top of her head and gave a slight smile. "You look like you're only a couple of years older than her."_

_ Bethany blinked in confusion, but before she could question the man's strange statement he pulled himself up into a sitting position. "Thank you for pulling me from that pile. I'm only sorry that the other people weren't as lucky," he said with genuine regret. "You must get me out of here, quickly, before the beast returns."_

_ Bethany nodded and pulled the man's arm around her shoulder. She found him to be incredibly light, his slender build apparently coming from not having enough to eat or something. As she hoisted him up she whispered in his ear. "I know we're in a hurry here, but what exactly is that monster? And why is it killing people?"_

_ The man set his jaw firm and grimaced. "It's one of the Mystic Beasts of old folklore. And it's killing people for the fun of it. But it went after me because I have something it wants, so let's go quickly."_

_ "YOU'RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE HUMAN!" came a loud, booming voice. The man reacted in a flash as, while being suddenly filled with adrenaline, he shoved Bethany away from him. Before she could understand what had just happened she heard a loud crash from where she had just been standing not a second ago. A thick cloud of dust erupted from the ground and blocked everything from her sight for a few seconds. When the dust cleared she looked in horror at the minotaur monster, who had the man under it feet. Out of instinct she started to move towards the to two, but the man had other plans._

_ "Go! It's not safe here!"_

_ She stopped in her tracks, coming to her senses and tensing up at the sight of the beast in front of her. "But what about you!"_

_ He laughed humorlessly. "My legs are crushed under this thing's feet and I'm sure that it'll kill me any second now. He just enjoys toying with people like this. But you must go now. Go and find the belt that he wants. Get yourself and that belt as far away from here as possible!"_

_ She hesitated, but turned and bolted for the door as quickly as possible. "I'm so sorry." she said as tears started to flow from her eyes, thinking of the man's obvious fate._

_ As he watched her run, the man chuckled happily to himself, the pain in his now destroyed legs not enough to take the smile off his face. "She reminds me so much of my sister. Too bad I'll never see her again in this life." He looked up with disdain at the creature's smug face. "Well what are you waiting for? Don't tell me you're having second thoughts about killing humans now."_

_ The smugness left the beast's face and was replaced with disgust. "I will kill every human I come across. No exceptions." He suddenly brought down his fist and crushed the man's a skull. But not before seeing that he still had that same blissful smile on his face. The creature removed his now bloodstained fist and looked down at what HAD been the man's head. "Strange. The other humans I slaughtered all died with looks of terror on their faces. But this one smiled as if he wasn't aware of his impending doom. He was a interesting creature, even for one of those disgusting humans. Now," he looked towards the door that the human girl had just ran out of and grinned with maliciousness. "One human down, many to go."_

_ Outside, Bethany could hear the sound of bones shattering and knew that the man she had almost saved was now dead. She had to leave, but she wanted to at least honor the man's last request by finding the "belt", whatever that was. But she wasn't gonna look alone with that thing now after her. "RYOU!" she bellowed just as the minotaur busted through the wall and eyed her with a murderous grin..._

Now she was hiding with her life on the line. And that Okibi kid was nowhere to be seen!

"I swear, if he doesn't come and help me before I get killed I'll make him regret it. I have to get away from here and find that belt."

The minotaur was beginning to grow impatient with the girl's evasiveness.

"No more hiding, little human. Your end is NOW!" He raised his foot and slammed it into the ground near a rather large crate. The whole room shook and the crate shattered, sending debris went flying everywhere. Any crate that was nearby began to shake and topple over. Bethany was about to run to another area but suddenly felt something collide with her head and saw nothing but black.

The minotaur heard her body slump to the floor and looked in the direction of the sound, discovering her unconscious body a little ways away from him. "There you are little human. Now you have nowhere to run." He crouched low to the ground and started to lumber toward her.

At that moment, Ryou stumbled out of an upstairs door as the entire building started to quake. "What's happening? An earthquake?" He hoisted the belt over his shoulder and ran to the railing. He looked down in wonder at the all the demolished equipment strewn around the vast floor. "On second thought, I think I know what did all this? I gotta find Bethany."

Just as he was about to head down the steps and search he heard loud stomping coming nearby. "Oh no, it's really close. But it sounds like it's moving away from me." He looked the railing and spotted the minotaur indeed moving in the opposite direction. But something seemed off. "It looks like its hunting. What's over there?" He looked ahead to where the beast was lumbering to, seeing a human body he then clenched his hands tightly around the iron of the railing. "Bethany. I gotta do something or it's gonna kill her."

Ryou looked around frantically for something to distract the minotaur with but could only find rubble around him. "Guess I don't have a choice then." He bent down and picked up a moderately large piece of rock. His arms quivered as he slowly lifted it over his head and threw it towards the beast. It landed a good way away from the beast but started to roll towards it, gaining momentum as its rotation got faster and faster.

The minotaur towered over Bethany, who was still unconscious, and clenched his claw into a fist in anticipation. "Now little human, it's time to join the rest of your species who've crossed my path. Die!"

At the moment he raised his fist to unleash his devastating blow, a rolling piece of rubble hit the back of his ankle and knocked him backwards. But he was instantly back on his feet, searching for where the projectile came from. "There's another human here. Now that I'm paying attention I can smell it." He spotted movement near a staircase. "There. This other human will be out for a while, so I can get to her later. I'll kill this meddling one first."

On the staircase, Ryou fell into a silent panic as he watch the minotaur face his direction and slowly crouch down. "Maybe I should get away from here."

"DIE HUMAN SCUM!" He shot off like a rocket in Ryou's direction, determined to kill one more disgusting human.

_"I'm not gonna get down the stairs in time!" _Ryou thought to himself. _"Guess I'll have to jump over the railing." _He propped one foot on the railing and looked down. Having second thoughts, he thought to himself, _"On second thought, maybe I'm way too high up for that."_

"JUST JUMP ALREADY!" came a feminine voice.

"Nani?"

Something suddenly flew into his back and projected him forward off of the railing right as the minotaur beast collided with the wall underneath, successfully taking out the support for the staircase and making it collapse on itself.

"WAAAAAAH! OOOF!" Ryou landed on the ground with a painful thud and slowly got to his feet. "Itie! What hit me?"

A low rumble came from the destroyed area under what used to be the staircase. "You must have good reflexes for a human to be able evade me like you did. But your luck ends now human," said the beast as it emerged from the wreckage.

"Oh man, what do I do now?"

"I'll tell you what you do." it said as it crouched down low once again. It suddenly sprung forward with its horns pointed low. "DIE HUMAN!"

"AWAY, YOU VILE BEAST!"

Ryou heard the same voice from before, but before he could find it's owner something small and fast flew around the minotaur, hitting it occasionally with a burst of sparks for some odd reason. He watched in awe as it slowly, and surprisingly, started to push the beast back. "What in the world is that?"

"AWAY FROM ME YOU TINY WENCH!" He finally found his footing and slapped the tiny object away from him. The tiny thing flew towards Ryou and flew around his head. Up close he could now tell that the thing that managed to hold back the large, powerful beast was in reality a tiny, crimson-

"Bird?" Ryou blinked as he watched the little bird fly around his head.

"I am not some mere bird!" It suddenly reared its wing back and slapped him. "I am a mighty phoenix."

"Itie." said Ryou painfully as he rubbed his now aching cheek. "I'm sorry, but you're kind of small for a phoenix, aren't you?"

"Silence, you disrespectful child. You should be wary, for I have not the strength to keep Mintauros at bay. Quickly, you must put on that belt if we are to survive this ordeal with our lives intact."

Ryou eyed the belt hanging over his shoulder and clumsily snapped it around his waist. "Um, like this? Now what?"

"MOVE!"

He quickly dove out of the way as the Mintauros ran through the spot he would've been had he not gotten that warning. "My body wasn't built for this kind of strenuous activity. If you're going to do something, Phoenix-san, now would be the perfect time," he said as he slowly got up.

"Oh I'm not gonna do anything. You are. You're going to use some of my power and defeat this foe yourself."

Ryou slowly looked over to where Mintauros was haunched over the ground in anticipation. He suddenly seemed reluctant to kill Ryou right away. "You want ME to fight THAT! Have you taken a good look at me?"

"Silence, boy." said Mintauros suddenly. His deep, rumbling voice sounded absolutely gleeful. "The traitor said you would be using her power. While it won't really help you any with defeating me, I can't deny that it will it will at least make this kill more interesting. So I'll give you this chance. Don't disappoint me."

"Oh we won't. Just you wait," said Phoenix-san confidently. "Now, young boy, we have this chance so let's not waste it."

"I'm not going to lie to you. I'm scared, but either way it's going to kill me so I'd rather go out fighting if its the last thing I'm ever going to do. So how do I use this belt?"

"Catch me first." She flipped in the air and landed in his now open palm with her wings folded inward. For some reason her back look squared, like the notch in the belt. "Say 'Henshin' then slide me into the slot in the belt and unfold my wings. I can't move while I'm transferring my power through the belt. You ready?"

"Yeah. I hope I don't regret this." He held her over his head and cried out. "HENSHIN!" He then brought her down confidently towards the belt, and completely missed. "Whoops."

"Ugh, how could you miss! This a life or death situation for you so focus!"

"I'm sorry. Let me try again." "HENSHIN!" He brought her down again, and this time slid her into the slot on the belt. Then he grabbed the tips of the wings and opened them up.

The cry of a bird was heard as a large bird of flames appeared to erupt from Ryou's back with wings outstretched then folded its wings over, enveloping his body in its flames. The flames dispersed in a large burst of wind, and in Ryou's place was something completely unexpected.

"Woah. What am I wearing?" Ryou said as he looked over himself in awe. He wasn't in his clothes anymore. Now he was wearing some kind of armor. His body was covered by a black body suit which went from his feet to his neck. Over his body suit on his chest, forarms, and lower legs was red armor with yellow flame accents. On his feet were black boots with small talons on the end. Strange slots for unknown object decorated the armor on his left and right forearms. On his held was a large helmet with large red bug eyes and a phoenix motif.

"You are now wearing the Armor of Rekka. My power is now flowing through your veins. Don't disappoint me." Said Phoenix-san as Ryou started to move around in the suit.

"This feels amazing! Now what do I do?"

"YOU FIGHT ME!" screamed Mintauros as he suddenly came from out of nowhere and slammed his fist into Ryou's stomach. He cried out as his feet left the ground and he went flying back until he hit the ground, bouncing repeatedly.

"HAHA! HURTS, DOESN'T IT YOU WEAKING!" He reared back and let out a weird, animal-like cackle.

As he was laughing Ryou slowly stood up, shaking his head as he rose. "Ugh. I can't believe I'm still alive. That didn't even hurt that much."

Mintauros's head came back down in a flash. "WHAT!"

"Now, young man, the new Kamen Rider Rekka, defeat your foe." said Phoenix-san as power surged through Ryou's body anew.

"Alright, but let me try something." He pulled his hand up to his face and clenched it into a fist and as he did so a shining light shined through the cracks in his fist. "May you find eternal rest in the the fires of my blaze."

**I hope you all enjoyed this first chapter and I apologize if there were any inconstancies, because I'm gonna go back and edit some of the rushed things. Anyway I have to draw 96 thumbnails of a shoe now by wednesday. I hope you enjoyed reading. Please review.**


	2. Crimson Typhoon

**Hello Readers. It's been a few months since the first chapter and I'm really happy that the second chapter didn't take a year to write like that one did. Anyway, last we left Ryou just henshining (I'm fairly certain that that's not a word) into Kamen Rider Rekka to fight the Minotaur beast, Mintauros. By the way my 22nd birthday just ended a little more than an hour ago so it would be an awesome birthday present and great motivator if you could leave a review it you like the story. Every little comment helps me get better in some way. So now that I have that out of the way I'll leave you guys to read. Kumamon-tachi, do my disclaimer!**

**We're not even in this story you slave driver! Whatever though. Rexmon, Cubmon, let's get this over with.**

**Alright!**

***Grunts***

**Disclaimer: Pyrorynox does not own Kamen Rider. Show pity on his unlucky soul.**

Mintauros backed away slightly as the new armor clad Ryou stepped forward hesitantly, eyeing the armor once again in awe. "This armor is amazing. I'm pretty sure that hit would've broken every bone in my body at least if I weren't wearing it. But," He looked up to the minotaur monster in front of him, "What do I do now?"

"YOU DIE!" He came up with a huge clothesline that would've rammed into Ryou's neck with the force of a truck but Ryou instinctively raised his arm and blocked the blow before jumping away from him.

"'Whoa! How'd I do that? My reaction time is normally horrible."

"It's the armor. It raised all of attributes, you reaction times, even your senses," said Blaze form the Rekka belt.

"My senses? How does that-! Ugh!" His ears had suddenly perked up inside the helmet and he turned just in time to intercept a double open handed palm strike from Mintauros by slamming his own open palms into Mintauros's. A power struggle began as the two pushed against each other's hands, neither one yielding an inch.

"The armor of Rekka is indeed powerful for you to be able to rival me in strength but we're evenly match so this won't go anywhere." said Mintauros with a smirk.

"So says you!" The eyes of his helmet shone brightly for a brief second before Ryou twisted his body and threw the surprised Mintauros over his shoulder, using the monster's on strength to propel him into the air and to send him skidding across the ground. Ryou raised his fists, ready to fight as Mintauros got to his feet.

"Oh you think you can beat me now? Well DAMN YOU!" He came running with a wild charge as Ryou began to panic slightly.

"Maybe I was a bit over my head when I decided to do this." He braced himself for impact as the monster came thundering towards him. He was sure he was going to get tackled until the sound of police sirens slowly filled the warehouse, the alternating red and blue lights filtering in through the windows. For some reason this made Mintauros suddenly stop his charge and back away from Ryou. "What the?" Ryou said in confusion.

"We'll continue this another time human, but I can't bring attention to myself from you worthless humans." He said cryptically and then bolted off, bounding up in a single leap to the second floor balcony, and jumped out one of the large windows.

"What was that about?" Ryou wondered out loud.

"I'll explain later, but right now we have to get your friend and leave this place. It would prove difficult to explain all of this to your human law enforcement." said blaze.

"Right. Ikuze," said Ryou as he ran towards where he had last seen Bethany's unconscious body, the enhancements made by the armor allow him to make it there faster and to easily navigate through the debris from Mintauros's rampage. He saw her on the ground and hoisted her up over his shoulder then proceeded to exit the warehouse just before the police ran in, pistols at the ready.

"ANYBODY IN HERE BETTER COME OUT NOW BECAUSE WE'RE SEARCHING THE PLACE!" said one really loud officer before he was bopped on the head by one of the fellow officer's night stick. "Ow! What was that for?"

"Thanks for alerting everybody that we're here genius. The sirens are a bad enough alert for them without your constant yelling." Said the somewhat older officer as other officers began to comb the place and search.

"Heh, sorry Lieutenant Standford. Won't happen again." said the younger officer with a mock salute.

Lieutenant Standford sighed and said something about 'rookies' under his breath. "Cadet Dirk, you have a lot to learn. First of all stop with that stupid salute." A faint 'yes sir' could be heard as a response as Standford proceeded to head over to where some of his fellow officers were, in a room that had a horrid stench coming from inside.

"What in the world is that stink?" said Dirk as he followed behind his lieutenant.

Lieutenant Standford took one brief look in that room and quickly turned to the Cadet. "Dirk, you really don't need to see this."

"See what?" He bolted around the lieutenant before he could stop the cadet and say immediately what he meant. "My God. This. This is. Horrible." He had to turn away from the sight of the pile of dead bodies, no human should ever have to see something like that.

Lieutenant Standford took pity of kid and roughly rubbed his back. "It's okay kid. You're not the only that's affected by this. In all my years on the force even I have never seen anything like this. "You go wait in the car while we search through this...mess."

Dirk took one last quick look at he pile of bodies before taking off without another word. Standford looked after his younger officer and sighed to himself. "Poor kid, just out of the academy and he already has to see things like this. Life can be cruel sometimes. So, what do we have here gentleman? He said as he walked up to where the other officers were examining some of the bodies.

"Well, Lieutenant Standford sir, it looks like most of these are some of the people who went missing over the past few months. We haven't found a live one yet, but I doubt if any of these poor people would be alive under all that. The smell alone would probably kill them. But there is one other thing, another body that looks somewhat fresh. Poor guy probably died the worst. His head was practically obliterated, most likely by something big and heavy. You really don't want to see it."

"I'll take your word for it. Alright, let's write a report and get the coroners up here to better examine the bodies and get forensics team to search for any dna from the monster that did this." He said the word not knowing just how right he was.

Cadet Dirk on the other hand was just walking around the area, taking everything in. "Who would do something like that? It's just so inhuman." He was walking around an area where a lot of rubble looked like it tossed around in random places, like a some kind of huge struggle had taken place. "What in the world happened here? It looked like the fight of the century took place here." He looked to the ground and found two sets of foot prints, one being way too big to be human. "Just what is going on in this city?"

…...

Meanwhile Ryou, still in the Rekka suit, had carried Bethany far away from the warehouse and to a secluded area with no one around. "She looks like she's alright. Now that that monster's gone I can take off the armor. How do I do that?" he asked Blaze as she was still attached to the belt.

"Just do the henshin sequence in reverse. You do remember how to do that right?" she asked skeptically, remembering vividly how he had initially messed up his first transformation.

"Yes, yes I know. Just give me a second." He reached down folded in Blaze's wings then pulled her out of the slot on the belt. The armor slow dissolved into flames and the flames dispersed. "Wow, that was scary. Good thing you showed up though, otherwise I don't think we would've gotten away. At least we'll never get to see him again."

"What are you talking about human? He'll be back and you'll have to fight him." said Blaze with disbelief.

Ryou was shocked to say the least. "What are you talking about? I only wanted to get me and bethany away from him! Why should I fight him again!"

"You heard what he said human. He's not done with you yet. You're eventually going to have to do battle with him again."

"No way. He'll kill me. What I did in that warehouse was just a fluke, I can't do that at will. And besides I'm sure that anybody that wears the suit can do what I did. Just find someone else because I can't fight monsters." He turned around from the tiny, floating phoenix and went to check on Bethany.

"Actually, no, not just anybody can wear the suit. Only you can wield my power now. Only you can stop him. But it looks like you were the wrong person to choose." She said to herself as she took on last look at Ryou and flew off.

Ryou thought he could hear her talking but when he turned around she was gone. "I'm sorry Blaze, but someone like me isn't cut out to be some kind of hero. Everybody thinks I'm some kind of weirdo." He left his thoughts at that as he noticed that Bethany was starting to come to. "Thank Goodness. You're finally awake. Are you okay?"

Bethany not so gently shoved Ryou away from her and slowly got to her feet. "Everything's a bit hazy but I do remember that I was attacked by a monster. What do you think?"

"Ano, gomen. It means sorry."

Bethany didn't want to admit, but she actually liked the way that word sounded. "Whatever. How'd we get away anyway?"

"Oh! Well you see I, um," He thought about it for a second. _"If I tell her I found a talking bird, put on a belt, and turned into some kind of superhero she'd think I were totally insane. I better make something up." _"Well I distracted the monster and got it away from you and it would've gotten me if the police hadn't showed up. The sirens seemed to scare it away. I came back and got you then took off because it would've been really hard to explain what we were going there."

She seemed to not believe his story for a second but sighed as it sounded convincing enough for her. "Alright, I'll buy it and I suppose I should thank you for saving me," she said hesitantly.

Ryou blushed and rubbed the back of his head. "Heh, it was no problem. You need my help so I helped you. It's what anybody would do."

"No, not just anybody would do that for another person," she said quietly to herself.

"What?"

"Nothing, but since our scooters are trashed thanks to me I guess we should walk home. I'd like to forget this night as soon as possible."

"Um, yeah. Wait, do you mean together?" he asked hopefully.

"Well, I wouldn't feel safe walking home by myself, knowing there's some monster out there that almost killed me. Besides, I don't think it's too far from the campus is too far from here so I won't have to deal with you for too long."

Ryou looked downcast at her last statement and she noticed this. _"Maybe I should be a bit nicer to him since he did save my life and all. And he's wrong about anybody risking themselves for somebody else. That tells me that he's not selfish like most people."_ "Listen Ryou, I'm sorry for what I just said and I suppose I shouldn't be such a pain to you all the time. It took a lot of courage to do what you did. Just don't look too much into that. So let's get going."

Ryou perked up right away and followed closely behind her as she started to walk back in the direction of the college campus.

…...

"This walk is boring. How about we talk about something?" said bethany after around ten minutes had passed.

"Um, I guess what would you like to talk about? I'm sorry, but I've never been much of a talker." said Ryou as they walked through the ankle deep snow.

"Hmmm, I wonder why that is. Anyway, what's with your name? I know you're Japanese-American and I heard that most Japanese names have some kind of meaning."

Ryou was surprised. Besides Nick nobody had ever really taken interest in his heritage or anything and Bethany was the last person he expected to converse with. She was really uptight at times and really quick to insult him but he still liked her for some reason. Maybe this was the first step to becoming friends with her. "Well my first name, Ryou, actually means a lot of things but in my family's case it means to endure."

"Endure? That's a weird thing to name your kid. But I guess it makes sense in a way considering you're always the butt of everyone's jokes and Nick's the only friend you have. Everyone else thinks you're weird and doesn't want to talk to you. I guess you've had to endure that kind of thing for a long time. Does it ever get lonely?"

She didn't receive an answer at first. Confused, she turned around to see that Ryou had stopped just a few feet behind her, facing the snow.

"Hey, Ryou. You okay?"

"Of course it gets lonely. Nick's great and all, really understand and open to my oddities, but one person doesn't outweigh a hundred others. I don't like the looks I get sometimes, like I'm some kind of weirdo."

"Stupid!" Bethany suddenly shouted as thumped Ryou's forehead.

"Itie! What was that for?"

"For being stupid. Even if you only have one friend, you shouldn't care about what other people think. They're not your friends so who cares what they think? Maybe the reason we think you're weird is because you take what we say about you too seriously. I mean you get so depressed sometimes it rolls off you in waves. Who would want to be friends with somebody like that? Make an effort to talk to people without being scared. I know you're brave because you didn't leave me to be killed and I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'll help you with that. I'll be your friend."

Ryou couldn't believe his ears. The girl that made fun of him more than anybody else wanted to be friends with him. "Just because I saved your life?"

"Not only did you save my life, but you risked your own to do so. That's more than some of my friends would've done for me. Now come on, it's getting cold out here." She then slapped him in the back of the head and started walking slowing, waiting for him to catch up.

"Hey wait up! If we're friends now then why'd you hit me?" he breathed out as he caught up to her.

"I'm sorry, but that's just too fun to pass up. But I won't do it as hard or as much, now let continue what we were talking about earlier. You told me what Ryou means, but what about your last name? I think it was Kiva or something."

Ryou let out a hearty laugh at that. "It's Okibi and it means 'blazing fire'. My dad tells me it has something to do with an old legend in our family. The name Ryou Okibi is actually a name that's passed down, but only when a first born Okibi is an only child."

"So you don't have any siblings then. Hmmm, and your name basically means 'endure the blazing fire'. To be honest that's actually really cool. You also said that your last name has something to do with a legend in your family. What's the legend?"

"To be honest I don't really know. My dad said since I wasn't a pure blooded Japanese then it wouldn't really interest me. I wasn't really much for legends and things like that when I was younger, but after tonight I think I might change my thinking a little bit." he joked, making Bethany giggle a bit.

"You're actually kind of funny, and you have pretty eyes. I saw them back before we went in the warehouse. You should really cut that hair though or do something with it so other people can see those pretty green eyes of yours. I heard Asians don't usually get eye color like that, so I'm assuming it's from your mother?"

"Yeah, it should've been almost impossible but it happened anyway. But it's such an oddity that I grow my hair out to cover it up."

"Well we're gonna have to fix that problem. Don't hide those eyes from the world, it's a crime. Think of how many girls will talk to you for your eyes alone. And," He turned her eyes to his attire as they continued to walk, the campus entrance coming into view, "we'll have to do something about all of those clothes. You look like you're prepared to spend a month at the North Pole."

"It snow's here constantly, I can't really imagine the North Pole can be much worse. But to be honest it's because I've been extremely clumsy my entire life so I wear a lot of extra clothes for padding to keep me from hurting myself."

"Hmmm." said Bethany with a thoughtful pose. She remembered that morning when she'd tripped him and expected him to fall to the floor, only he slammed face first into the door of his classroom. That kind of bad luck was only seen in movies. "Well we'll just have to do something about that now won't we?"

Ryou shyly looked down to the ground as he walked, thankful that he saw the college parking lot beneath his feet. "Hey, we made it back finally. We should probably go to our dorms and- oh no I forgot the pizza!"

"That's right! We left them by our scooters when we heard that monster. There's no telling if they're still there or not."

…...

Mintauros belched loudly as he tossed the two pizza boxes away from him. "These humans may be weak and pathetic, but they sure do know how to make a feast fit for someone as powerful as I."

…...

"Just my luck. This is why I never want to be the one to go get things. I usually just mess it up," Ryou said sadly. Bethany felt bad for the guy, as it had been her fault that all of that had happened.

"Listen, Ryou. I'll treat you to pizza tomorrow since everything was my fault, okay? Right now though go get some sleep and I'll see you in the morning."

"Really?" Ryou said shyly.

"Of course. We're friends now are we not?" She gave a wave and turned to head back to her dorm, but suddenly turned back around with a dreamy, fangirlish look in her eyes. "Tell Nick I said goodnight." Then she turned back around and practically glided off.

As soon as she had turned around Ryou had facefaulted. Not once since she woken up had she even mentioned Nick so that was completely unexpected. "I guess it'll take more than saving her life to make her forget about Nick for too long."

…...

"I'm back," said Ryou wearily as he walked through the front door of his apartment styled dorm. He sat on the medium sized couch that occupied the main room of the dorm and tried to sink into the mattress with little progress.

"Yo." came Nick's voice from the kitchen doorway. He was dressed in a pair of baggy green pajama pants and and white t-shirt. In his mouth was a slice of pizza. "You were taking a while so I just ordered some. I tried to call you but I never got answer. There's still some in there for ya if you want it."

Ryou, in a once in a lifetime moment, uncharacteristically stormed off to his room and slammed the door. Confused, Nick tip-toed to the bedroom door and carefully put his ear against it.

"AHHHHHHHH!" came a sudden aggravated scream from the room. It scared Nick so bad that he yelped and ran off to his room to hide from whatever monster had taken occupancy in Ryou's bedroom.

"Geez. What happened when he went to get the pizza?" asked with a mouth half full of pizza.

A couple of hours later, Ryou was lying down in his bed, looking at his hands. "Did all of that really happen tonight? It almost seems like a nightmare that we were actually attacked my a monster, and that it's what's been actually killing people. Then there's that little phoenix and that belt. It let me transform into some armor that allowed me to fight on par with that monster. It felt incredible. But most of all, Bethany's actually friends with me now! Whoo! I can't wait to talk to her in the morning."

…...

Morning came quickly as Ryou slept, his excitement for the day not deterring his sleep. He got up, showered, and dressed as like normal, except with a huge smile on his face. Even Nick found it unnerving as they said at the kitchen table and ate leftover pizza.

"Uh, are you feeling okay, Ryou? You seem...rather happy this morning."

"Oh yeah. Last night was a bit weird, but a something good came out of it. Me and Bethany are friends now."

"Wait, the same Bethany that runs that rabid fanclub whose sole mission is to kidnap me and do all sorts of twisted, perverted things with me? That Bethany?"

"Yup."

Nick suddenly grabbed Ryou by the shoulders and shook him. "Don't fall for it! It's a trap to get me to lower my guard around her. She wants to get closer to me through you and then abduct me when we least expect it!"

"I saved her life last night!"

Nick immediately stopped shaking him. "Really? How'd that happen?"

"Uh, I'll tell you about it later. We should get to class."

"You're right about that. Let's go." The two got up and grabbed their books before they walked out of the front door.

"Hey, Ryou. Where's your scooter?" asked Nick, looking around.

Ryou needed an excuse, luckily his scooter disappearing was a common thing. "I guess somebody must've taken it and hid it from me again. Oh well, I think I'll walk for once."

"Okay then. You've got a long ways to go though make it to the fine arts building."

"Yeah, I know. I'll tell you how everything goes. Have a good day, Nick." Ryou said as he walked off.

"You too buddy. Hmmm, I guess I'll look for his scooter while he's gone.

…...

"So what happened to you last night, Beth? You never came back last night."

"Some stuff happened and I got back really late. It wasn't anything important. I did make a new friend though." said Bethany as they stood in the hallway of the fine arts building waiting for class to start.

"Oh really now? Who is it?"

A suddenly "bump" was heard at that moment, like someone had walked into a door.

"That would be him now. Be right back."

Her friends all crowded around as she walked towards the door seeing a familiar figure lying in a heap at the door. "Is that the Okibi kid? No way is he the friend she was talking about."

"Maybe she was joking and she's only gonna do something funny as usual. This is gonna be good."

Bethany suppressed a giggle as she watched Ryou through the door, rubbing his forehead. _"Now that I think about it, his helplessness is actually kinda cute."_ "Still bumping into walls I see," she said as she opened the door and propped it open.

"Well, um, aren't these doors supposed to be automatic?" I was expecting it to open and I just ended up walking face first into it.

Bethany pointed up to a sign that was taped up a little ways up on the door.

**Under maintenance due to malfunction. Please wait for someone to open the door for you.**

"It figures. Sorry you had to see that, especially after last night. I guess I'm still-"

"I'll give you hand."

"Eh? What?"

"Come on. You have to be more careful." She reached down and helped him to his feet thenhim inside.

"Thank you, Bethany. I wasn't expecting that," Ryou said with a smile on his face.

"And why not? We are friends now, are we not? This comes with the territory." She reached up and ruffled Ryou's hair as her friends walked up to the stranger sight.

"Hey, what the hell is this?"

"You mean he really is your friend? How did this happen?"

It wasn't like her friends to act like this towards her so she started to get frustrated. "I told you that some stuff happened last night. I learned last night that he's not as weird as we all think he is and I've had a change of heart towards him. Now we're friends."

"Wow. Since when were you a charity case, Beth. I never expected you of all people to willingly been seen with the pariah of the school. I mean just look at him. I'm surprised he can even walk around looking like that. And he doesn't even talk. He just pops up out of nowhere and it's really creepy. We don't anything about him," said one of her male friends.

"Hey. That's not fair at all. Could you all just at least try to get to know him?"

"Hey Bethany. I think I'm gonna go. I wouldn't want your friends to think badly of you for hanging out with me. I'll just talk to you later, okay?" Ryou gave a small smile as he turned and started walking to class, but as soon as his back was facing the others his smile broke and his lip started to quiver to hold back the tears from not being accepted.

Bethany watched him walk away then turned on her friends. "I can't believe you guys! I figured you would all take my opinion into consideration. He's a really nice guy and would go out of his way to help people that had wronged him. Way more than any of you would do. Even me. Yeah, I was the one that picked on him the most, but I'm gonna make it up to him."

She turned her back on them and ran after Ryou as her friends stood there speechless.

"Ryou!" Bethany called after Ryou as he walked along towards his class.

"Bethany?" said Ryou as he turned around, wiping his eyes. "Why'd you follow me? I figured you'd rather hang out with your friends."

"You ARE my friend, Ryou! I'm sorry for how they acted. They just don't know you like I do. They shouldn't have acted like that."

"But, Bethany, you don't know me that well either. Is all of this really because I saved your life?"

"Heh. Partly. That made me give you the benefit of the doubt. But talking to you last night was a really big part of it. Maybe I don't know you that well. But I know you well enough to know that you don't deserve to be treated like you've been treated all this time. I was the worst one, so I have a lot to make up for. But I'm gonna try my best. So how about it?" She put out her hand for Ryou to shake.

Ryou looked from Bethany's face to her hand repeatedly then slowly shook it as his free arm went to wipe the tears from his eyes.

"Ryou, are you crying?"

"No, I just have tears flowing from my face."

…...

A week went by with the two of them meeting in the hallway occasionally and eating some meals together. Bethany's friends were baffled by the amount she spent with the young Asian-American and even some rumors were going around that she had some kind of newfound fetish for weirdos. Also during the week, a new string of murders had occurred, more over the week alone than there had been over the past couple of months.

Bethany and Ryou sat at a table at dinner time in campus union and Bethany looked nervous as she read the evening paper. With a growl she took the newspaper and and crushed it in her fist.

Bethany threw the newspaper at Ryou's face out of habit, but he fortunately dodged it and watched at Bethany crossed her arms. "You okay?"

"Of course not, and you shouldn't be either. We both know what's killing all of those people, and he could still be looking for us. Does that not worry you?"

"Of course it does. Especially with what he said when the police came," he said that last part quietly to himself, but Bethany still heard him.

"What did you just say? He spoke to you!"

_"I don't have to tell her everything. I just have to warn her."_ "When the police came, he said he'd be back for us. I know he'll be looking for us."

"When were you gonna tell me this!" She shot up to her feet and slammed palms into the table, causing an echo that startled everyone in the lunch room, including Ryou.

"I-I didn't want you to worry, and he'll mostly be going after me since I stopped him from killing you. I was going to do everything I could to protect you. I'm sorry." He looked down at his feet then got up. "I'll be leaving you alone now Bethany. Being friends with you was fun while it lasted." He then walked out of dinner without even taking a look back.

"Ryou," she said softly as she watched him leave. "Dammit." She picked up her things and took off after him.

…...

Ryou sighed as he leaned against a tree and gazed at the evening sky. "I really messed up with Bethany. I guess I'm always gonna be a weirdo to her. Maybe I'm wrong and he's forgotten all about us."

"Unfortunately for you, you are not so lucky."

Ryou jumped in fright and scurried behind the tree at the sound of the disembodied voice. "Oh man he found me!" Ryou said in a frightened whisper as he looked around frantically.

"Calm yourself, human. He hasn't found you yet." said Blaze as she dropped down right in front of his face, scaring him.

"Ahhhh! Phoenix-san! It's only you."

"Please refrain from referring me as that. I am regal being known for centuries as Blaze. Any other title is an insult."

"I'm sorry, but what are you doing here? And did you just say that that monster is definitely looking for us?"

"Indeed. I have taken it upon myself to monitor his actions and he most certainly looking for you, but has been unable to find you until now. All the humans that have died were killed out of his frustration in not location."

Ryou sucked in a breath in realization. "You mean all of those people died because of us. This is all my fault."

"It is partially your fault, but also mine for choosing wrong when I let you use the belt."

"Then find somebody else to use it! I'm nobody so there should be loads of other people better suited for it than me! He could've probably saved everyone!"

"If it were possible then I would have. But there's a problem. When I said that you were the only one that could fight Mintauros, I meant that. Because when you put the belt on, you became bonded to it through an ancient and mystical bond. No one else but you can use it now."

"What! No, there has to be some way for it to go to somebody else."

"There is. The belt can only change users if the current user dies."

"But-" Ryou stopped as it took him a second to realize what she had just said. "What did you just say?"

The little phoenix sighed and took roost on his shoulder. "Listen. The belt is bonded to you through a special link once you successfully transform with it, meaning no other human can wear it. That link breaks upon death."

"So that's why you said that I was the only one that could defeat that monster the other night. But you seem strong, seeing as how you held him off when he was about to kill me."

"I am very powerful," she scoffed. "But the amount of damage I can do in this small body is rather limited. The belt harnesses more of my power."

Shaking his head, Ryou swatted the small bird off of his shoulder. "Listen, I get what you're saying, but I not some kind of superhero. I don't know anything about why all this is going on and I have nothing to do with any of this. Neither does Bethany, so I have to find her before something bad happens. I'm sorry; I really am." And with that Ryou took off at a jog to search the campus for Bethany, not knowing that she was already about to find trouble.

…...

The sun was just starting to set when a random male student was walking through a bit of snow by the gate that surrounded the majority of the campus when he heard a slight 'thump'ing sound that was quickly growing louder.

"Huh? What the hell's that noise?" He started to inch closer to the gate as the thumping became louder. "That sounds like heavy footsteps-! Ahhhhh!" He screamed as the gate in front of him seemingly exploded right in front of him and a large beast stepped through the resulting rubble. He and other students immediately began to scream and run away in terror and it surveyed its surroundings as if searching for something.

"I smell that human girl close by along with the stench of Rekka's user. This place also reeks of humans. It should be fun slaughtering them all." He let out a great roar, panicking the alright ready frightened students even more, and began to run after students that were still too close to him. Any unlucky students that he was able to catch up to didn't even have time to think before their short lived lives were snuffed out by Mintauros's powerful fists. He chuckled in almost gleeful fashion as he tossed away their lifeless bodies.

"What a wonderful day this is, for me to find all of these humans to slaughter." He continued his assault as the smell of Ryou and Bethany became stronger.

Nearby Bethany tried her best not to scream as people who came out of nowhere just kept bumping into her. "Oh my God! Will you all watch where you're going! What are you all running from anyway!"

"Ugh!" Bethany looked to her left and saw one of her friends had tripped while running and clumsily dodged around the oncoming crowd of distressed people to get to her. "Bethany?"

"Amy, what's going on! Why's everybody freaking out!"

The girl, Amy, started to bawl as Bethany helped her up. "Some kind of monster broke through the gate and it's back there killing people! It's horrible!"

_"A monster? It couldn't be. I gotta find Ryou!"_ In an instant she bolted in the direction everyone was coming from, ignoring the brief calls of her friend Amy.

"This is bad. This is really bad!" said Bethany out loud to herself as she ran.

"Well human, it just got worse." said a low, familiar voice.

Bethany seemingly turned in slow motion as a impossibly large, furry arm slammed into her and sent her skidding across the concrete. The blow, surprisingly, wasn't enough to knock her unconscious, but was enough to knock all of the breath out of her and then some.

She could only lay there and watch unmoving as Mintauros came closer to her. "I've finally found you, youngling. Now I can kill you. Then I can find and kill Rekka."

"LET HER GO!"

Mintauros looked over to see Ryou, out of breath and looking frightened.

"If you let her go, then I'll let you kill me. Let her go and don't hurt anymore humans and I swear you can do whatever you want."

Bethany looked at Ryou like he had grown a second head, momentarily ignoring the creature that stood over her. "Ryou! What are you talking about! Just run!"

"No! I'm the one he wants. If he fights me or if he kills me then maybe all this will stop. Please Mintauros. I'm begging you. Please let her go." He got down on his knees with his head bowed as his voice began to crack and a few stray tears fell from his eyes.

Mintauros stopped his advance of Bethany and slightly turned his head in Ryou's direction. "You would give up your life for these other humans?" He turned back to Bethany and planted his large foot on her stomach. A loud, agonizing cry escaped her lungs without her realizing and Ryou's head shot up in response.

"What are you doing! I said you could have me so please stop!" He got to his feet and grabbed onto the monster's powerful arm, trying to pull it away from Bethany with all his might, but with a wave of the same arm Mintauros threw Ryou away from him. He bounced on the ground twice before he came to hard landing on his back.

"You think that one human life will quell my desire to see you ALL dead? You know nothing of monsters boy. I kill for sport, to see the look of terror on their faces before I end their worthless existances. You're all going to die by the hand of monsters!" He began to laugh as he put more pressure on Bethany's abdomen, making her scream out louder.

"Bethany!" Ryou yelled as he slowly got to his feet. _"How can such a creature exist? He doesn't value life at all! The only way to stop him and save everybody is to kill him, but I can't do it! I can't do anything!"_

_"Remember my words, young human. Only you can wield my power. Only you can stop him." _came a familiar voice in his head.

"She was right. If I had just listened to her earlier then maybe I could've stopped all this from happening, but I gave in to my fear and hesitation." He slowly began to walk towards Mintauros and the screaming Bethany while holding his side in pain. Then it turned into a slow run as he gradually got faster. "I've always to scared of everything to do anything. But I'll do something now even if it kills me! Blaze!"

Mintauros began to laugh hysterically and raised his foot from Bethany's chest. "You think that wench will come for you now? Well either way it's too late for her!" He raised his foot again and prepared to stomp Bethany into the next life just as she had done to the man weeks before. "Die human scum!"

"BETHANY!" Ryou yelled as he broke out into a full blown run. He knew he wouldn't make it in time but he never faltered, didn't stop his charge. Then he said something fly past him.

"Away from her you brute!" said the tiny phoenix Blaze as plowed into Mintauros's chest and sent him flying backwards. But she didn't stop there. She then flew towards Ryou and flew once around his waist as he ran, a trail of fire following behind her forming the belt that he'd found in the warehouse as it snapped around Ryou's waist.

Without hesitation, Ryou snatched the tips of Blaze's wings between his thumb and pointer finger, making a slight flicking noise, "HENSHIN!" ,slid her through the slot on the belt effortlessly, and snapped his fingers between the wings, opening them up into the wing shaped slots on the belt. The bird's cry was heard and the flaming wings came from Ryou's back just like before and enveloped him the armor of Rekka once again as performed a flying kick on Mintauros, knocking him away from Bethany.

"Ryou?" She said weakly.

"I'll explain later. Stay here where it's safe until I get back." Then he ran off to fight Mintauros as Bethany passed out.

…...

"Fight me you filthy human!" yelled Mintauros as Ryou, as Rekka, approached him. Said rider clenched his fist as he cautiously walked forward.

"I just wanted you to stop killing innocent people. But it's obvious that even if you killed every human on earth then you wouldn't be satisfied. Now, may you find eternal rest in the fires of my blaze!"

He ran forward and landed a flaming punch to the monster's jaw, then spun around to his right and brought his left knee into Mintauros' lower abdomen. The monster roared in pain before Ryou grabbed his shoulders and planted his knee into his back three more times then kicked him away. Mintauros stumbled forward and fell to his face as Ryou stopped to take a breath. "Don't look down on us humans. Because I can beat you."

Mintauros got up and laughed sinisterly to himself. "Oh, so you think you can beat me eh? You only have that power because she gives it to you and because she can't fight me herself. But I will show you the power of real beast." He suddenly charged, much faster than before, and rammed his horns into Ryou's chest, sending him flying backwards.

"Gah! Why's he suddenly so much faster than before! He charged at me like a bull." Ryou rubbed his sore chest as Mintauros charged again. Ryou raised his hands and grabbed Mintauros's horns at the last second, but the minotaur reared his head back and flung the rider behind him.

He grunted in pain as he hit the ground but quickly got up just for Mintauros to ram into him again. He charged with Ryou still lodged between his horns and pinned him to a wall and began to pummel him with punches. "How does this feel human! I don't know about you but I'm enjoying this!" he shouted in between punches.

_"If this keeps up he'll kill me and then he'll kill everybody on campus. I can't let that happen. I won't let it happen!" _He grabbed the horns tightly and pushed until they were out of the wall, but Mintauros kept pushing. "I'll use that strength against you." He slowly began to move his feet up the wall behind him then flipped over the monster, but used the monsters momentum to then flip him over his head.

He got up angrily to face Ryou, only to receive a two footed kick to the chest. He was thrown back even further as Ryou pushed off and back flipped to his feet. "Finish it young human!" came Blaze's voice from her perch on his belt. Ryou nodded and made a motion to run towards Mintauros, but stopped as the belt suddenly began to spark.

"What's the?" Ryou said aloud as he looked down only to then clutch at his head in agony as an unbearable pain suddenly began to course through him. "What? What's going on? My body! It feels like its on fire!"

Blaze closed her eyes sadly from her perch, the heat emitting from the belt not affecting her in the slightest. "I am sorry, young one. I must have been wrong about you being able to wield my power. Your body wasn't able to handle it and now it is destroying your body. In a few minutes, your body will be nothing but ash. I am so sorry."

Mintauros watched angrily as the fires spouted from the belt and started to consume Ryou. "Such a waste of my time. I was supposed to be the one to kill you!"

"I'll try my best to ward him off so that the other humans can escape, but you cannot be saved. For what it is worth, you fought well," said Blaze as she prepared to leave the belt.

"No." came Ryou's strangely calm voice.

Blaze's eyes widened considerably. "You. You're still alive! How is this possible!"

"If I don't stop him, here and now, he'll only keep killing until you find someone to use the belt. I won't let that happen. I'll stop him even if I end up using the last of my breath to do it!" He charged at Mintauros, determined to win even if he died, with a loud battle cry. The flames around his body intensified as he got faster, and then in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

Mintauros scoffed as the rider vanished completely. "His body was so weak that there weren't even an ashes left. Pathetic."

"I'll show you 'pathetic'!" came Ryou from nowhere as he suddenly reappeared from seemingly nowhere and punched Mintauros so hard that he went flying.

"How! You should be dead!"

"I refuse to die!" Ryou said as the fires around him began to grow stronger. He charged again but moved so fast that he couldn't be seen, except for a fiery blur and a twin trail of fire that resulted from the friction of the ground and the sheer speed of Ryou's run. He began to run around Mintauros in a circle so fast that a small tornado had formed around Mintauros and began to lift him into the air. The fire from Ryou's run followed the path of the funnel and turned into a large flaming tornado as Mintauros floated above it.

"Time to finish this," said Ryou. The flames from his body retreated to his back and formed into a pair of large flame wings that propelled him into the air and over Mintauros with one flap. He pointed his feet straight down as the wings flapped upwards, sending him down as he began to spin and stomped into Mintauros's chest. The beast cried out loudly as the force of the vertical drop kick slammed him straight into the heart of the funnel and into the concrete below with so much forch it formed a crater that was strangely shaped like a pair of wings. Ryou jumped of the creature's chest just as he began to glow.

"Don't tell me that wasn't even enough to kill him?" Ryou said in disbelief.

"No," said Blaze ominously. "He's done."

Mintauros painfully stood up as he began to glow brighter, coughing up blood. "You may have beaten me, human. But I will return. Count on it." He coughed up more blood and began to cry out as his began to glow so brightly that it was almost pure white.

"TAKE COVER!" Blaze yelled. Ryou didn't wait for an explanation as he jumped behind a car just before Mintauros went critical and exploded. As the dust from the explosion slowly cleared Ryou poked his head cautiously over the roof of the car. When he saw that the coast was clear he hopped over it and walked over to the now larger crater where Mintauros had been not a minute before.

"Wow, there's nothing left of him. I can't believe I actually beat him."

"Indeed," replied Blaze. "You should be dead right now. But your body was able to quickly adapt to the increase in power and channel it into a powerful attack. This belt has had many users, many who were already able to handle much more power than this when they first put the belt on, but none have ever adapted like that. What is your name, Boy?"

Ryou's eyes slowly left the crater and looked into the night sky. "My name is Ryou Okibi. And I am Kamen Rider Rekka."

**I'll more than likely do some editing later and repost this but I just wanted to get it out before I went to sleep. If you liked it or have any questions then please leave a review and I'll be sure to answer as best as I can. Or just tell me what you like about it. Goodnight everybody.**


	3. Beasts of Old

**Well it has been far too long since I have updated this thing and I do feel pretty bad about it but I've been too focused on Kamen Rider OOO and Gokaiger. If you have no idea what those are you should probably look them up because they've been keeping me pumped all summer. I'm also happen to announce that my first nephew was born exactly a week ago and things have been loud ever since. Pray for my eardrums please. Now this chapter isn't as long as the previous two, but that is because isn't much action in it. Just the aftermath of the battle pretty much. Now I noticed that I had forgotten to acknowledge the one who reviewed in the first chapter so I'll do that now along with the ones that reviewed recently cause I like to show gratitude.**

**AnneAlysse: I'm not sure if I caught every punctuation error this time, but I hope I caught most of them. Just remember that nobody's perfect. Also, about Bethany's transformation, how would you feel about a guy that just saved you from being smashed to death by some monster? You better be damn grateful to him lol. To be honest though she will still have some of those "meangirl" tendencies towards Ryou at times, but just out of habit. Even bitchy girls can have a heart from time to time. I've seen it. **

**Dakegun: Thank you for the review and I don't think I acknowledged your first review so I apologize for that. I'll try to keep all my chapter as detailed as the first two and I hope you enjoy this one. And I also agree that guys like Ryou need to get more respect.**

**Sendo25: If you're seeing this, hope you're enjoying the story so far.**

**Ryuzen Zabiarov: If you're seeing this, I hope you're enjoying it too.**

**Also, to the general public, the term is BATED breath and not baited. You're not trying to catch a fish with your breath or something. Alysse pointed out that a lot of people get the words mixed up so I wanted to point that out too while it was on my mind. With all of that out of the way let's get this party started.**

**Disclaimer: I do now own Kamen Rider, but if I did OOO would be crossing over with Gokaiger right about now. SUBARASHI!**

Blaze unlatched herself from the Rekka belt and flew a little over Ryou's head as the Rekka armor faded away in a shimmering burst of flame. Exhausted, Ryou suddenly fell to his knees and breathed heavily.

Blaze, for a moment, wanted to reprimand him for being weak when he suddenly collapsed, but remembered that he had just beaten a beast with a level of power he previously should not have been able to handle. So she gave him her own version of a compliment. "You almost didn't make it. Good thing your body's chemistry is strange for a human's."

To tired to retort, but wincing more than he should have at the word 'strange', Ryou strained himself as he got to his knees and began to walk in the direction that he had left Bethany in. "I have to see if Bethany is alright." He got as far as a couple steps before he dropped to his knees again and then fell face first into the dirt as he suddenly passed out.

Blaze sighed to herself and decided to take pity on the poor boy. Sirens were heard coming from nearby, no doubt coming in response to the monster, Mintauros, causing havoc on the college campus. She looked to a pile of rubble near Ryou and yet it aflame with a mild explosion, something that was sure to attract the human law enforcement and have them come that area to look for survivors. Surely they'd find Ryou. Then she flew a little ways to where the girl, Bethany, was and did the same thing to a pile of rubble that was near her. "They will both need the aid of human healers for their ordeals. I can tell the boy later of the job that is now his, for Mintauros will not be the last of the horrors that he must face." And with that she flew off and perched into a tree nearby that wasn't on fire until law enforcement came and discovered the two college students and some other survivors. As ambulances were called and students were rolled out to the hospital, she followed the one which held Ryou.

After a night of searching, students and faculty were still being pulled out of rubble, some alive and some not so lucky. The police were having quite a time trying to figure it all out. Lieutenant Stanford, the same man who was in charge of the warehouse investigation, transversed the scene of devastation with Cadet Dirk right behind him.

"The hell is going on in this city?" asked Dirk quietly to himself. "First that warehouse with all those dead bodies, and now this. Looks like a monster rampaged through here." He stopped as he noticed his Lieutenant staring at a wall that looked like a wrecking ball went through it.

"Cadet, I wouldn't be surprised at this point, especially looking at that. And all of this." He nodded towards all the bodies littering the ground. Some looked like they had been _squeezed_ from the waist down. Others looked like they had been crushed by falling debris. Most looked like something had ripped them apart. Cadet Dirk gulped down some bile that had developed in his throat at the sight of the mangled bodies. He had only seen this kind of thing before in comics and video games before he joined the force. But to actually see it in real life was a different experience entirely.

"Ya know, the survivors have been sent to the hospital. I want you to go there and see if you can question some of the kids about what happened here," Lieutenant Stanford said to Cadet Dirk.

"Are you sure you want me to do that, sir?"

"Yes. We'll be able to handle things here. I want a full report on any information you find."

"Yes, sir." Cadet Dirk saluted and left for the nearby hospital. Stanford looked around at all the destruction.

"Again, this isn't really something his eyes should be seeing as a cadet." He took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it before putting it to his lips. "Whatever could do something like this is some kind of fucking demon."

...

Ryou's eyes fluttered open as he came to. The first thing he noticed was that he was in a hospital bed. The next thing he noticed was that Bethany was sitting in a chair beside his bed, wearing one of the hospital gowns.

"It's about time you woke up," she said with a slight smile.

He sat up in bed and winced slightly. "Itie. Um, are you alright?" he asked as he turned to her.

She gave a simple nod and smiled again. "I have some bruises here and there, and according to the nurse that came in here earlier, you were just suffering from a bit of exhaustion. But that's getting off extremely lucky, compared to some of the other people," she said sadly. Ryou looked away from her, frowning to himself.

"How many got hurt?"

She knew he would want to know, so she had the information ready. "Forty of us were injured, but more than thirty died. And from what I saw, their deaths weren't exactly painless. They're still finding bodies as we speak. That monster enjoyed causing carnage."

"Well he won't be hurting anyone else. I made sure of that." Bethany looked at Ryou questioningly but then thought back to the moment before she had passed out earlier in the night.

"Ryou, I want answers. And don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. You tried to trade your life for mine and when that monster wouldn't agree some bird thing attacked it. Before I passed out I saw you surrounded in fire and change into something else. Explain." Ryou exhaled and looked at her to speak, but his attention shifted to the door before he could get a word out.

"Nick," he said, looking in the doorway.

Bethany's head turned so fast she should have gotten whiplast. She was a split second away from squealing in her chair and tackling the college student, but in an amazing show of restraint she merely got out of her seat and turned to Ryou. "I'll come check on you later. He looks worried." She left the room but not before giving Nick a split second glance.

Nick nearly ran away, but the girl didn't look like she was going to attack him like she usually did. "Hey, Ryou, is she okay? Normally she tries to jump me whenever I'm in the vicinity."

"Yeah, she just has some bruises."

"Alright." He look skeptical, but shrugged his shoulders. "What about you?" he asked Ryou.

"I apparently passed out from exhaustion. You know, probably from running from that monster," Ryou said nervously. He didn't want Nick to know what really happened and that he had beaten the monster that had done all of that damage.

"So it really was a monster. That's pretty crazy to think about," he said with a slight chuckle. His face then got serious and he looked under the Ryou's bed.

"Uh, what are you looking for?" Ryou asked curiously.

"Just looking under the bed for monsters," he said when he came up. "Seems silly, but since we just found out that monsters exist you never know right?"

Ryou's face blanched. "Nick that's not funny. I'm gonna be afraid to go anywhere now." He then gave Nick a look as his friend began to chuckle to himself. "Glad you're finding so much amusement in this but I'm totally serious." he said with a whimper.

Nick finally managed to suppress his laughs and laid a bag on Ryou's bed. "There's a fresh set of clothes in there for when you get discharged. I kinda figured you'd need them after I found out you were in here."

Ryou nodded in understanding and put the bag in the chair beside his bed. "Thanks Nick. Are you going to stay long?"

"I can't unfortunately. Some of the guys from the basketball team got hurt too so I have to see how they're doing. I'll see you later Ryou." Nick gave a thumbs up then left the room to check on his teammates. Ryou sighed to himself and laid back against his pillow.

"I'm glad he wasn't hurt like some of the others were. But what happens now?"

...

Meanwhile, Bethany was attempting to get a drink out of the vending machine, but it took her money. She tried slapping the side of it with her palm, but when her drink still didn't come out she got angry and began to kick the machine. "Give me my drink you stupid machine! Ugh!" She gave it one last kick and gave up. "Guess I'll have to drink some of the fountain water then." She turned to head down the hallway, but suddenly jumped when someone tapped her on the shoulder. "Ah! Get away from me!" She instinctively turned around with her left arm outstretched and her palm open. A loud slapping sound rang through the room followed by completely silence. Then...

"YAOOOOUCH!" yelled a police officer as he clutched as his now aching cheek. Bethany realized what she had done and immediately started to apologize. The officer waved her off as he rubbed his cheek. "You don't have to apologize because I scared you, but boy do you pack a wallop."

"Um, thanks. But I still feel bad about slapping you. Is there something you wanted?"

The officer pulled out a pencil and pad from his pocket. "Actually yes. My name is Cadet Dirk and we're investigating incident that occurred on the college campus last night. We heard that survivors was sent to this hospital so I was sent out to see if I can get any eyewitness accounts of what exactly happened. You look college age so I assumed you were a student."

Bethany nodded in understanding. "Yeah, I'm a student, but I was knocked out so I hardly really remember anything," she lied. _"Except for being nearly killed by a minotaur and seeing my new friend turn into a superhero to fight it."_ she thought to herself. "Sorry I can't be of more help."

"It's quite alright, miss? I didn't get your name."

"It's Aldridge. Bethany Aldridge. And I hope you can find somebody that can give you some information." She gave a slight bow and continued on down the hallway to Ryou's room as Cadet Dirk shrugged and looked around for more students.

Bethany rounded the corner and stepped into Ryou's doorway. "Hey, Ryou. Can we talk n-What are you doing?"

Ryou had just taken his shirt off when Bethany stepped in. He looked from Bethany to his bare chest then quickly hid under his was holding back a slight blush until she saw his slender arm reach out from under the blanket and grab the bag that was sitting in a nearby chair.

"Um, Bethany, could you give me a minute to change into my clothes?"

Bethany shook her head and turned around. "Geez, I didn't realize you were that shy. But I'm not leaving this room again until I get some answers so you'll just have to change under the covers or something." She looked over her shoulder and saw a lot of movement under the blankets. "Guess he's changing under there then."

A couple minutes later Ryou emerged from under the blanket, fully clothed but barefoot. He was only wearing a pair of jeans and a short sleeved shirt, a vast contrast to the tons of thick shirts and jackets he wore on a daily basis. Bethany couldn't help but notice that he was surprisingly fit.

"Hey, Ryou."

"Close the door," he suddenly said. Bethany figured that he didn't want to be overheard and closed the door. She then turned to him again and gave him a look.

"Answers. Now."

Ryou sighed and shifted his body so that his legs were hanging off the side of the bed. "Do you want to hear about what happened last night, or about what really happened at the warehouse?"

"Let me just ask the questions here buster. So what really happened that night?" Bethany asked.

"Well I found this belt on the upper floors of the warehouse and came back down when I heard you call my name. When I got there you were unconscious with Mintauros standing over you. That's the name of the monster. I managed to distract him and keep him from killing you, but then he came after me. When he was about to kill me this bird came out of nowhere and attacked him. Except it wasn't a mere bird. It kind of _combined_ with me and the belt and equipped me with this ancient armor. I fought Mintauros off until the police started coming. It ran away and I carried you off to somewhere safe," he answered.

Bethany was quiet as she soaked all the info in. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want to tell you because, well look at me. I'm not exactly the first person people picture when they want to be saved. And would you have believed me?"

"Not at first I guess. But I sure believe it now and it's good thing you killed it. It had killed a lot of people and even more would've died if you hadn't. Face it, you're a superhero."

"No I'm not. That was only a one time thing since he's dead."

"I fear that may not be the case human," came a voice from the window.

Bethany and Ryou peered at the open window as a small red bird, Blaze, flew through it and onto the bed. The small phoenix took note of the surroundings and sighed. "Do you humans really need all of this just to recover from injury?"

Ryou sighed while Bethany opened her mouth in shock of the talking bird that had just entered the room.

"D-d-did that bird just talk!" In a flash she had crossed the room and picked up the little bird in her hands, examining it closely. Now it was Ryou's turn to open his mouth in shock at Bethany's boldness, knowing full well what Blaze was capable of.

"Uh, Bethany I don't think you should do that." He could tell that Blaze was close to exploding from the pulsing vein the phoenix's forehead.

"I am no mere bird! Now release me at once!" With strength that betrayed her small stature, she burst forth from Bethany's enclosed palms and hovered in the air, anger radiating from her body in waves. "If you dare to ever do that again, I will burn you to ash. A Mythic such as myself is a god compared to you." Just to emphasize her point she let out a small flame in front of Bethany's face, making the young girl fall backwards in fright.

"You're a phoenix. But they're not supposed to exist."

"This coming from the human that was attacked twice by a minotaur," Blaze simply stated. Realizing that Blaze had a point she got up slowly and bowed in fear.

"I'm sorry. Please don't kill me."

"Bethany's she's not going to kill you," Ryou suddenly said. "It's because of her that I was able to beat Mintauros. It was her power I used."

"Yes. So you would do well to mind your tongue. Or you will burn." Blaze let out a small amount of heat from her body in an outward burst, showing that she meant it.

"O-okay," Bethany said, shaking slightly. "But where do you and that other monster come from?"

"I come from an ancient race of beasts from when what you humans call the Medieval period. This was when our race was much more abundant and roamed freely along with the humans of that time. All of the creatures you have ever heard of from all over history are all of my race. We are called the Ancients."

"Ancients?" Ryou questioned. "But when Bethany was holding you, you called yourself a Mythic. At least I think that's what you said." Bethany nodded in agreement.

Blaze continued on with her story. "Yes, I did indeed say that. That is because we Ancients were divided into three classes. There were the Mythics, such as myself and Mintauros. We are the creatures of today's legends that most of your human adventure stories are based on. Next are the Mystics, magical creatures that were known to dwell in nature. And the third group, the Horrors. They were dark creatures that lurked in the night and were the stuff of nightmares, although there were some that befriended humans and members of the other tribes. The three tribes clashed very often and many humans died from our battles. That's where the Kamen Riders were put into play, to protect the humans from us."

"Kamen Riders?" Bethany asked. "Is that what Ryou is?"

"Yes. They were essentially knights and mercenaries, depending on who was wielding the power. They were each partnered with a member of my race. They would transmit their power to a human through use of special belts crafted by whatever Ancient they were partnered with. It wasn't a very popular occupation among humans though, as many Riders were killed in battle."

At that, Ryou got up and gathered the belongings he had on him when he was admitted.

"Ryou? Hey what's wrong with you?"

"I'm leaving. Bethany I'm not a 'Kamen Rider' or whatever she said. I only wore the suit and fought to protect you. Now that Mintauros is dead I don't have do that anymore. It's over."

"That is where you are wrong young human," came Blaze's voice from behind.

"Excuse me?" Ryou asked, turning to face her.

"There are others, many others and they're all migrating to this area. Like Mintauros, it seems they are being drawn to something in the area. More will come, some worse than Mintauros even."

"But it's not right for Ryou to put his life in danger like that. Just find somebody else to do it."

Ryou clenched his fist and walked out of the room before Blaze could tell Bethany had told him the day before. He didn't want to hear it again.

"Ryou? What's wrong with him?"

Blaze sighed and fluttered to the window, preparing to take to the sky. "He left because he knows nobody else can wear the belt and use my powers." And with that she took off, leaving Bethany in the room alone.

"Belt?" Hearing that word several times in the conversation seemed to spark something in her. "Oh my God the guy from the warehouse told me to protect a belt! Hey Ryou!" Bethany ran out of the room and caught up to Ryou who was standing in the lobby.

"Bethany? What is it?"

"There's something I need to tell you. That night at the warehouse there was a guy. He was being held captive by that monster and told me to find some belt. You and Blaze kept mentioning a belt so I think it might be the same one. Do you have it?"

"No. Blaze has it inside her body. It's like a part of her power so I guess she can do that. Wait, some random guy knew about it? What happened to him?"

Bethany's expression turned grim and she looked down to the floor. "He was killed." Her shoulder slowly heaved as she began to sob some, remembering what she had seen that night and how she had talked to that man just before he died. Ryou was not sure what to do. He was not sure to how to approach women when they were in this state, but Bethany needed support and he felt he would be a bad friend if he did not do something. He bit his lip and slowly approached.

"Ne, Bethany. Can-can I hug you?"

The girl looked up with tears in her eyes, then suddenly hugged Ryou and sobbed into his shirt. People around the hospital stopped what they were doing to watch to scene before them. Ryou blushed up a storm in embarrassment and hesitated in embracing her but managed to lightly pat her on the back as she sobbed.

"Thank you Ryou," she said after letting all of her tears out. "That was really nice of you. I don't like to let people see me cry but I feel like I can in front of you."

"And everybody else," he mumbled in response.

"Wha?" she looked around and noticed everyone staring at the two of them. Temples throbbing in frustration, she let out her fury. "ALL OF YOU GO ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS AND STOP BEING NOSEY!" Everybody jumped from the sheer volume of her voice and continued what they were doing.

"Wow Bethany. I didn't know you could do that."

"Eh, me and my sister used to fight a lot so my voice gradually got louder as we grew up. Now I'm gonna get checked out of here and leave with you. We have some research to do."

"Nani?" Bethany grabbed his arm and ran off to the receptionist to get her freedom from the hospital.

...

After Bethany had checked with a nurse and gotten checked out, the two college students had gone to the library to do "research" as Bethany had said. She walked through the aisles carrying a pile of books in her arms that threatened to crush her if she fell from the weight of them. She dropped the books on the table with a large thump, making Ryou jump from his seat.

"Bethany, what's with all the books?" Ryou asked quietly. Bethany took one of the book and opened it up for Ryou to see. He quirked an eyebrow when he read the title. "Mythical Creature Encyclopedia?"

"Yup," Bethany responded with a smile. "Since we're having to deal with these things now I think it would be best to do research."

"Bethany, I already said I can't do this. I can't fight something like that again. I'm sure if something like that shows up again the police can handle it."

Bethany was becoming confused. Ryou had already shown that he was capable of defeating monsters with the armor of Rekka, but his insecurities were still strong for some reason. Where was the hero she had recently thought him out to be? "Ryou, I don't get it. Why won't you fight? That phoenix said more were coming and that you were the only one that could use that armor. What's the problem?"

"I'm fighting monsters bethany!" he said in a frustrated whisper. "Do you have any idea what that does to somebody like me? I'm the guy that until recently you and everybody else picked on, and now I'm thrown into something I shouldn't be in in the first place! The only reason I put on the suit in the first place was because I thought Mintauros was going to kill us both and that I didn't have anything to lose. And that was before I knew what was gonna happen if I put on the suit!"

"Wait, what's gonna happen if you put on the suit?"

"The suit is a conduit for Blaze's power to be used by humans, but the human body isn't made to use that kind of power and can only hold so much. Eventually the suit will hold more power than my body can handle and it'll destroy me!"

Bethany gasped and held a hand to her mouth. "Did you know that when you put the suit on last night?" Ryou nodded and looked down at the books before laying his face in his hands and giving a large sigh. "Ryou, why can't she get somebody else to wear the suit? " He shook his head.

"According to Blaze the suit is now bonded to me and nobody else can use it unless I somehow die. Can we please not talk about this now?"

Bethany frowned but nodded before taking a seat beside Ryou. "Hey, we'll figure something out." She reached over and squeezed his shoulder. "Come on, I have to look up something."

Ryou looked up and gave Bethany a look. "I thought you just said-"

"It's not about mythical creatures," she said suddenly. "I want to see if I can find anything on that guy who I met in the warehouse. He knew about the belt so maybe we can find something to help you if we find out who he is, or was."

"Do you really think that we can find something to get me out of this mess?" She nodded and dragged him over to a computer. Ryou wondered how they would look up anything on him with literally no information, but never let it be said that Bethany was one to let something like that stop her. She was far too stubborn. So when the two emerged from the library half an hour later at closing time she swore to herself that she would try again tomorrow when they had more time.

"I never knew you were so determined Bethany. But it's understandable that we didn't find anything since we don't even know where to start looking. I don't even see how he could know about it, considering it's supposed to be Blaze's." At the mention of the small bird Bethany's eyes lit up and she grabbed Ryou's arm, dragging him down the snowy sidewalk. "Oi! Where are we going!"

"To find your feathery friend! Now start a' lookin!"

As the two started to call out the phoenix's name, said phoenix was perched in a nearby tree watching to two closely. She had originally thought of the boy Ryou to be a typical human male, albeit very withdrawn and timid, but after yesterday's battle she was thinking differently. When humans used the belt to draw on her power there was a certain level that each one could attain. Each human had a limit as to how much of her power they could hold and once that limit was met. If anymore power were to be taken in, that power would backlash and that human would be burned to a crisp. That was what had happened to the last human that used the belt. But last night was different. Ryou, being of smaller build and strength, had a much smaller limit than most of her previous users and last night that limit was met. But instead of burning to death like the others had his body somehow adjusted to the overflow of power and he was even able to perform one of the armor's more advanced techniques: the Phoenix Funnel Drop. There was obviously something strange about the human boy and she wanted to know what it was, so she would force him to wear the armor if she had to. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that, but he was showing reluctance now that Mintauros was gone and that he knew that more monsters like him would be coming.

Blaze knew how humans feared things much stronger than them. It was in their nature and one could not fight what was in their DNA. Still, seeing such cowardice nearly sickened her. She suppressed the urge to torch the kid as she watched him slip on a patch of ice and fall to his backside. "So ungraceful. How was it that he fought like such a warrior yesterday?" She turned to fly away and took off into the chilly sky, her fiery nature keeping her from feeling winter's fury. She looked down at the people as she soared the sky, taking notice of a particular pretty girl that was walking down the sidewalk. She moved her head to keep an eye on the sky in front of her, but her keen ears picked up on a muffled scream below. Looking back down she noticed that the girl she had just seen was nowhere to be found. "It seems that something is amiss." She flew down to where she had seen the girl a second before and noticed a single yellow feather that was as big as her body. She glared at the feather with familiarity. "Looks like Mintauros was not killing humans all by his lonesome. So _she_ is here too." She took to the skies again to find Ryou. The time to fight had come again.

...

The girl grunted in slight pain as she was dropped on her fanny in a alley. It was the middle of the day, but the sky was covered in snowy clouds which blocked a lot of the sunlight making it seem almost like night in that already dark alley. She was confused and very afraid. One second she had been walking down the sidewalk to go home, and the next she saw a blur slam into her and take to the sky with her in tow. Now she was here. That wasn't even the worst part. She could _feel _something in the alley with her. Her fears were confirmed when a pair of yellow, catlike eyes seemed to fade into existence right in front of her face. She gasped as she felt something wet glide across her cheek. _"Is that a tongue?"_ The girl could only stare into the glowing, slitted eyes as the wet object removed itself from her cheek and disappeared into the darkness.

"Hello human female. I want to ask you a riddle."

She began to grow more afraid, as she had thought that it might have some sort of wild animal and had not expected it to speak. Whatever the thing was though, it moved in the darkness. What little light there was in the alley illuminated the figure slightly. She had calmed down for an instant when she made out a human face, and raised an eyebrow when she made out a pair of bare breasts, but suddenly got back into coward mode as noticed it was attached to a body that didn't look human. It was beast-like and a pair of wings could faintly be seen in the darkness. She did not want the thing to attack her, whatever it was, so she decided to go along with it as scared as she was. "A riddle? W-w-why?"

The figure smiled in the darkness and dragged a clawed finger slowly across the girl's jawline. It drew no blood, but was enough to get the point across. "It's kind of what I do. Just answer it."

"O-okay," she said in growing fear.

"I am something that all humans fear, something that is unavoidable. I can be drawn out and painful, or quick painless. I am the ultimate absolute. What am I?"

The girl cowered in fear and confusion as the monstrous figured towered over her in the dark alley. "Um, please give me a minute." Her thick mascara began to run and tears ran down her once pretty face.

"Answer the riddle." The figure said sweetly. It was that sickingly sweet kind of voice that obviously was not real, but used to intimidate people and it was definitely serving its intended purpose.

The girl's breathing became deep and frenzied as she began to sob harder. She could not think of anything under the pressure and said the only thing that came to mind in a small voice. "I don't know,"

"Too bad. The answer is..." A faint gasp was heard from the girl as she felt something sharp enter her gut. She looked down and saw a pool of blood forming at her knees. The source? The large, bloody hole in her stomach where her intestines used to be. The girl fell face first to the concrete, limp and lifeless. The shadowy form took the girl's bloody innards and began to extract the bodily fluids surrounding them with its tongue before slurping them up greedily. "Death."

**Hope you all enjoyed this chapter and all will be answered in the next one. Later.**


	4. Finding the Will to Fly

**UPDATE KITAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! It took me a year, but I finally finished chapter four thanks to my friend and fellow writer, Alysse. There's your shout out, now be sure to go and brag about me to your friends. When we last left our weirdo- ahem, hero, he had just beaten Mintauros and was looking for Blaze so that he and Bethany could learn the identity of the man that saved Bethany that night at the warehouse. Will it be revealed this chapter? No. Chapter five, I promise. Be sure to review. I'll even take some constructive criticism. Alysse, that doesn't mean you get to criticize me. Anyway, enough stalling. Chapter start!**

Ryou and Bethany combed the city for hours searching for the phoenix Mythic but to no avail. Figures that she would be a no show when they actually looked for her, but apparently she did not want to be found. "Do you think we maybe made her angry Bethany?" Ryou asked his current search partner.

"I honestly don't care if we made her mad or not. Because of her your life's in danger, so I say that she owes you anything that you ask of her. We know that the doctor knew about Blaze's belt, so that could mean that they knew each other." It was really dark by now and the two were walking down the deserted sidewalk near the more populated part of the city.

As they were walking, Ryou held out his arm in front of Bethany to stop her from going any further. The girl was about to ask what was wrong, but Ryou held a finger to his lips, signaling her to be silent. He pulled her back behind a tree then pointed to an alley across the street. "Ryou, what's wrong?"

"I'm not sure what it is, but I can hear something coming from that alley. Something tells me that we need to avoid being seen for a few minutes." Bethany looked at Ryou confused but then nodded her head. The two turned to the alley and watched for a few minutes. After a few minutes, a large figure, crouched on all fours, stepped out from the alley and spread out large wings before taking flight. The two waited a couple of minutes to make sure the thing was gone before moving out from behind the tree.

"What was that, another monster?" Bethany asked.

"Unless somebody is doing an overly elaborate cosplay, then I'm guessing so," Ryou responded. Without a word he started to walk cautiously across the street towards the alley with Bethany following quietly behind him. It was so quiet they both jumped, clearly startled when Nick's voice echoed from down the sidewalk.

"Yo, Ryou! Wait up!" the athlete called out. Bethany and Ryou panted in an effort to catch their breath as he caught up to them. "Hey, Ryou. Bethany," he said the latter reluctantly. "What are you two doing sneaking around over here?" He pointed to the alley that the two were about to go down. "You're not planning on 'getting it on' are you?" he asked suggestively. The two, having finally achieved a steady breathing rhythm, looked at each other, then Ryou proceeded to faint from embarrassment. While Ryou was unconscious Bethany tried to explain the situation.

"I promise this isn't what it looks like, I don't like Ryou like that. The thing is we were looking for something and saw something big with wings fly out of this alley. We only wanted to see if there was anything in here. That's all." She said while avoiding eye contact. This was the guy she had a crush on. She was so embarrassed that he thought she was attempting to do inappropriate things with Ryou of all people.

Nick could feel the crushing aura of Bethany's crush on him and proceeded to back away slightly. He had almost forgotten that this was the girl that headed his fanclub and was gunning for him the hardest. "Okay okay, I believe you. But you two shouldn't go in there alone like that. Neither one of you are that tough so I'll go with you just in case. Let's wake up Ryou."

Bethany snapped herself from her trance and helped Nick try to bring Ryou back to the waking world. _"He doesn't think Ryou's tough? Boy he couldn't be more wrong about that."_ She then looked down to see the boy was drooling. _"On second thought, he does have a very good reason to think that way."_ She brought her fist back and slammed it into Ryou's forehead, successfully waking him up.

"_Ow_! What hit me?" Nick whistled and pointed at Bethany who then apologized.

"I'm sorry. You were really out of it and that seemed to work. We need to check down the alley." Ryou nodded, still blushing slightly from Nick's earlier accusation.

The alley was completely dark so Ryou felt along the walls to find his way towards the back of the alley as the three of them headed towards the back.

"Ryou, what exactly made you want to look down an alley that you saw a monster exit from? This seems a little dangerous." Nick asked as he followed closely behind Bethany who was behind Ryou.

Ryou stayed silent. After last night's fiasco he couldn't tell him that he had felt drawn to the spot. He knew something bad had happened here, but wanted to make sure. It started to stink a little bit a little ways down the alley. The three covered their noses as the smell got worse the deeper they went. Each of them had a very bad feeling about the source of the smell.

"It smells like something died in here," Bethany voiced aloud. She didn't know how right she was. Something was in the way of Ryou's path and he fell to the ground on his back with a loud smack. Hearing him fall, his two companions fumbled around their pockets for their phones so they could illuminate the area better to help him up. Finally lighting up the area they saw him getting up while rubbing his backside. "Hey, you okay?"

"I'm alright, but what exactly did I trip on?" He pulled out his own phone and pointed the screen at the ground below his feet, which was revealed to be stained with red.

"What is that?" Nick asked.

Ryou's voice hitched in his throat. He knew what it was but didn't want to voice it aloud. Once he raised his phone, letting its light follow the trail of whatever it was, he didn't have to. A couple feet away from them was random human leg, from the calf down. It was glistening with the same red substance that stained the ground. At least they knew what he tripped over. The two behind him began to back away in fear while Ryou just stared and walked up to it in disbelief. Judging by its slimness and the high heel that adorned the foot, it WAS a female's. He raised his phone up higher and found the rest of her, or what was left of the rest of her. He wished that he had stopped at the leg. As reality finally hit Ryou he jumped away from the spot and turned his back on it. His friends were breathing as hard as he was, trying their best not to vomit.

"We need to get out of here and call the cops!" Nick said panicking. The other two nodded and they ran out of with him as he called the police to report what they had found. Little did they know that they were being watched by a being perched on a overhead building.

"Seems like more 'players' have stumbled onto the results of my last game, and three no less. This may prove to be more entertaining than the one they found," Said the Sphinx as she stared down at them.

"I would advise against that if I were you, Tsubako," came another voice from behind her. The sphinx, now revealed to be Tsubako looked behind her to see the Phoenix, Blaze, glaring at her.

"Why hello there, Blaze. It's humorous, but I recall you being taller the last time we met. What is it that a human lover would want with me?"

"Silence you harlot. Gallivanting around like some lecherous, human female. Have you no shame?" Tsubako sighed and then skipped to Blaze, her breasts bouncing with every hop her body made as she smiled brightly, a slight dribble of blood still spilling down the corner of her mouth.

"My my you do seem rather disturbed. I was just about to play a few games with these human children I just discovered. Care to join me?" She asked the small phoenix. Her answer was a small fireball to the face. The Sphinx took to the sky to avoid the fireball and glared at Blaze.

"I cannot let you harm those children, Tsubako."

"And who is going to stop me? Surely not you; in your weakened state you wouldn't even be able to harm me. Now if you had that human with you that killed Mintauros then you might stand a chance." Blaze's eyes instantly shifted to Ryou down on the ground as the police finally began to pull up and ask the three college students questions. Tsubako followed her gaze and stopped on the Asian American. "Ah, so he's the one. Then why do you not call on him to fight."

Blaze turned her head away from the boy and faced Tsubako. "He refuses to fight. He only did so before because his and that female's lives were in jeopardy. He no longer wants a role in this fight."

"But he is bound to the belt is he not. If I killed him you could then find someone more suitable to use your armor. I would be doing you a favor." This only made Blaze's glare intensify. "Ah, I see. Despite this inconvenience for you, you still hold on to your promise to that human from centuries ago. Well, you are a fool to do so for that fool of a human!" Blaze snapped into a rage and nearly sent a fireball her way, but the Sphinx flew up out of her range. "Interesting. Not even in your most wrathful days was anyone able to anger you to this extent. Well I suppose I'll let the boy live for now, because as long as he lives you will have no way to fight me or any of our kind. It'll be fun to watch you struggle. Ta-ta." She flew off, leaving Blaze in a rage.

"HOW DARE SHE! I'LL MAKE SURE SHE BURNS!"

Down on the ground, the forensics team and the coroner were studying the dead body in the back of the alley while the police questioned the three. Lieutenant Stanford sighed as watched the obviously shaken young adults. He really hated it when kids of their age had to see things like that. "Listen kids, you say you saw some kind of winged creature come out of the alley before you went in there?" They all nodded. He rubbed the back of his head. "First the damn minotaur and now this. This city is becoming a fucking madhouse." Ryou slowly and shakily raised his hand up. "Yeah kid?"

"Um, would you mind not using that kind of language around my friend Bethany? I think it's impolite." He looked down at the ground as the Lieutenant stared at him.

"What's your name, kid?" he asked with authority.

Ryou suddenly snapped to attention with his arms at his sides. "H-hai! Ore no Okibi Ryou da!" He switched to Japanese in nervousness and fright, confusing everyone in the vicinity. He looked around at everyone staring at him and instantly went back into reclusive mode. "Did I, did I do something wrong?"

Lieutenant Stanford put his hand on Ryou's shoulder and smiled. "Nah kid, you're just a rare breed is all. Not a lot of guys your age nowadays would think of a woman's wellbeing like that. Um, Okibi Ryou, right?" Ryou nodded. "Well I've worked with some Japanese officers before so I understand a little bit. An officer will escort you back to your campus because it's no longer safe to walk the streets at night, Okibi-san. And I'll try to watch my language more."

Ryou nervously smiled. "Thank you, sir. Um, we'll be going now." The lieutenant ushered over a cadet and told him to take the kids back to their college campus. The cadet looked at Bethany and pointed a finger at her excitedly. "Ah! It's you from the hospital earlier today!"

Bethany looked at the cadet and recalled him from earlier. "You're the officer that was questioning survivors."

Lieutenant Stanford rubbed the bridge of his nose in annoyance. "Dirk, could you stop making conversation and move your a…." He stopped and looked at Ryou. "My apologies. Please move your butt, cadet." He tipped his hat to Ryou and the others who all returned halfhearted smiles. "Poor kids." He walked up to one of the forensics people who were studying the crime scene. "So does the coroner have any idea as to what happened here?"

The coroner, a middle aged female with a graying hair, walked up to him with a notepad. "Well Lieutenant, if I had to say, and I wish I didn't, it seems like her insides were…..well ingested."

"Say that again."

"Well, it seems as though something opened her up and ate most of her internal organs, along with chewing up her limbs like chicken wings. Also…." She stopped as the Lieutenant raised a hand for her to stop.

"I think that's enough. I don't need a visual. Just finish up, I'm gonna have a headache reporting this in." The coroner went back to her job as Stanford rubbed his temples. "I need a vacation."

...

In the car with Cadet Dirk everything was quiet. Awkwardly quiet. "So," Dirk started. "You seem to get caught up in this kind of stuff a lot young lady."

Her eyebrow twitched at being called "young". "You can't be much older than me you know. So you can't call me young. Besides, I've just had a run of bad luck lately."

"Well anyway, you're lucky to be alive. We investigated a warehouse a week ago that is supposedly where that minotaur was living and found a bunch of bodies in the same shape as that one." Ryou and Bethany both twitched briefly at the memory of the warehouse where this whole thing started. They both glanced briefly at one another and nodded, mentally agreeing to play dumb.

"Officer, if that was the minotaur's hideout and it's dead now then what do you think this one is?" Nick asked.

"Well, most of the bodies in there were just smashed to bits, but there were a couple dozen that were all slashed up just like the one you all found. We think that whatever did this tonight may have been cahoots with the minotaur."

"Cahoots?" the three asked simultaneously. Dirk chuckled, embarrassed.

"Sorry, I watch a lot of old cop shows. And yes, it seems that the two were working together. While the minotaur may be dead now, this thing is still going around killing people. Unless whatever killed the minotaur wants to finish the job and kill whatever this new creature is, we have a really big problem on our hands."  
Bethany looked to Ryou and he looked back at her for a moment before looking away from her again. This didn't go unnoticed by Nick. _"I wonder what that little exchange was about."_

Dirk slowed the car to a stop as he reached the front of the campus and looked back at the kids. "Alright you guys. Be sure to stay securely indoors and don't come out unless you absolutely have to. It's not exactly safe right now." Three nodded and stepped out of the squad car one at a time until only Ryou was left. Before he could get out though, Dirk caught his attention. "Hey kid."

"Yes?" asked Ryou abruptly, as he had just stepped a foot out of the car.

"I've known Lieutenant Stanford for a little while now and I can tell you that he doesn't cut his language down for anyone, not even his wife. So for you to get him to cut down on the obscenities, you must be a really kind person, whether you know it or not. You don't seem very assertive so I'm guessing you get picked on a lot. I want to say that no matter what you go through in life, it's important to keep that kindness. There's not enough of it in the world, and that's a shame."

That caught Ryou by surprise and he nodded before stepping completely out of the vehicle to join his two friends. The three of them waved the officer a goodnight as he drove off before entering the campus. "Hey Ryou, what was that about?" Nick asked.

"Yeah, why'd he make you hang back?" asked Bethany.

"Well, he uh wanted to tell me that people like me are rare," he responded. He turned and looked in the direction of the now out of sight squad car and hung his head. "He's wrong though. Cowards like me are a dime a dozen in this world," he said quietly. Nick didn't hear these words, but Bethany did. She walked forward and motioned him away from Nick.

"Hey. Where are you two running off to?"

Bethany racked her brains to think of an excuse to use and one came to her at the spur of the moment. "We need to talk about an assignment we were working on before all this started."

Ryou realized what she was doing and played along. "Yeah, I'll come back to the apartment afterwards. This is really important though." The two began to walk off as Nick watched after them.

"The two of them are hiding something. They don't have any classes together to have an assignment." As the two were walking off together a chuckle was heard not too far off. A shadowy figure stepped out from behind a tree and watched the two leave Nick with curious eyes. "Tomorrow I'm going to get some answers."

"Ryou, we may not have been friends for long, but I've noticed that you make it fairly obvious when something is wrong with you. How did you know that, whatever it was in the alley?" Bethany asked once they were away from Nick and nobody was around.

Ryou was not really sure how to explain it to her. He had sensed the Mythic in the alley, like he had felt Mintauros at the warehouse a few nights before. She would think it had something to do with the Rekka armor, but the truth was that it had nothing to do with being Rekka. It was a heavily guarded secret that he could not even reveal to Nick, let alone Bethany. What did bug him though was finding the corpse in the alley. Despite beating Mintauros, people were still being murdered, and there was no one to stop them except for...

"Blaze was right, Bethany. More of those things showed up just like she said they would."

"Ryou, there's nothing you can do about that. I know you feel like you have to fight, but wearing that suit will kill you. She said so herself," Bethany responded.

The Japanese-American puffed out his cheeks in thought, a quirk he had developed over his lifetime. "That may be true, but as long as I don't fight a lot of other people will die. If someone else were able to use Blaze's belt right now then I wouldn't have a problem. But I AM the only one able to use it right now. And who's to say that this thing won't eventually come after me? Isn't it better that I at least go out fighting and save as many people as I can than to sit around while innocent people get hurt and wait for one of these things to kill me?"

"Speaking as a selfish brat," Bethany started, "I think you should only worry about yourself. But speaking as your friend, I say you should do what you feel is best. I can't make you not risk your life or anything, but I can at least give you some encouragement. Are you sure you want to do this though?"

Ryou nodded in absolute certainty. "Maybe I'm not the hero type, but I can definitely fight if it means protecting you and others. I refuse to sit by anymore."

"Then let's find that stupid bird tomorrow. I don't think she's around here now because we'd be able to see those bright feathers from a mile away even in this darkness." The two of them shared a laugh and raised their heads as they saw a group of people coming. "I think we should get going before someone comes and thinks we're doing something we shouldn't be doing." Bethany gave a small chuckle and punched the slightly blushing Ryou lightly on the shoulder, which made him stumble and fall down. Bethany sighed. "Well maybe some things will never change."

Ryou hid his head behind his arms to hide his embarrassed chuckles. "I'll always be clumsy. My father was like that too. So we should look for Blaze tomorrow." She nodded in agreement.

...

The next morning, the two decided to split up to try and find her. Considering that the small phoenix wanted Ryou to be Rekka, she probably was not too far away from him. It seemed though that they were not the only ones searching for someone. Since Ryou and Bethany had first met up that morning and began their search, Christina Hill , or Chrissy, had been tailing Ryou, hoping to learn more about him. She had seen Ryou TALKING to a bird right before the monster attack and the reports said that the thing that killed the monster looked themed after a bird. Coincidence? She did not think so and was going to find out the connection. Her younger and much shorter sister groaned as her elder sister practically dragged her a long without so much as an explanation.

While the two sisters got along very well, they were drastically different. Both went to a small private school before starting college, which Amanda , or Mandy, pretty much felt right at home, but Chrissy was more of an oddball. She was very outgoing and very friendly to pretty much anyone. She loved acting with a passion and welcome the weird with open arms. The only reason she did not talk to Ryou was because he seemed so shy towards people and she did not want to pressure him. She found his oddities interesting and would have been happy to talk to him when he was ready. She may have even had a small crush on him. Unfortunately the whole talking bird thing had greatly aroused her curiosity and now she could not stay away.

Mandy was a little preppy, and was too short to reach the top shelf in the grocery stores, but she had just as much beauty as any woman of average height. Most girls would be picked on for being so short, but what she lacked in height Mandy made up for it in quick wit. If anyone tried to call her out on being short she would quickly make a retort that stung so bad it would have the other person in tears instantly, both men and women. The only people who would keep up with her were a few back in her hometown in northern Mississippi. She knew Bethany, because they actually came from the same hometown, and she wasn't exactly known for being nice. So this suddenly change in her had her curious as well. Especially since she was one of the many who also thought Ryou was a huge weirdo. "Chrissy, are you sure about this? I mean maybe you were just seeing things."

"Nope. I know what I saw and I'm going to get to the bottom of it. Now is the time to confront him." said Christina as she jogged forward to catch up to Ryou.

"I was afraid you were going to say that. Crazy older sisters," she said with a sigh as she drooped her shoulders.

"Ryou!" Chrissy yelled as she caught up with him, her sister following reluctantly behind. Ryou turned around and saw the two but was too nervous to say anything, which was alright with Chrissy. "Alright Ryou, now I know this might sound a little outlandish, but I noticed that your friendship with Bethany started suspiciously a little before that monster attack on the school. Mandy and I were nearby when it all started and it seemed to be looking for someone in particular."

"My crazy sister seems to think it was you for some odd reason. While I admit you two suddenly being the best of friends is odd, I don't think it has anything to do with any monsters." Mandy said as a retort.

Chrissy scoffed at her younger, much shorter sister. "Come on, Amanda. Have a more open mind, will ya? Besides, I saw you talking to some cool looking bird right before the attack started and it was talking back!"

"WHAT!" Mandy and Ryou asked at the same time, Mandy out of disbelief and Ryou out of surprise that someone had seen that.

"Explain it now, Ryou. You can't, can you?"

Mandy backed away from the boy and looked at him like he wasn't human. "Was that thing really after you? What in the world are you?"

Ryou raised his hands in defense, but froze when a familiar feeling made itself known. "Look, it isn't what you think it is. Listen, I can't really explain what's going on right now, but you need to get away from here. It's not safe to be around me right now."

Mandy was all but ready to take him up on his offer to run away, but Chrissy just wouldn't hear of it. She eyed Ryou like a piece of meat, not like how women would eye Nick, but as if he were some kind of new toy and she was an excited child. Ryou had never gotten that kind of look and it downright terrified him. He tried again to get through to her. "Chrissy, please stay away from me."

"Too late boy," came a voice from the sky. Tsubako had caught up to Ryou and now she had two more targets in her sights. "Hmmm. Now this is quite the interesting predicament we have here. I wanted you boy, but maybe it would be more fun to watch how you react to me torturing these girls."

Ryou immediately ran forward and stood in front of the two girls, surprising Mandy and bringing Chrissy out of her trance. "What are you…..why are you trying to be a human shield for? You can't do anything against your bullies, let alone that thing. So why?" Mandy asked.

Chrissy was asking her own questions. "You were trying to keep that thing from finding us? I...I didn't know. And I just kept pressing him for info."

"Amanda. Chrissy. I know what you two think of me as. I'm weird, and reclusive, and the last person you would expect to do something like shield other people. I would agree with you, because that's how I see myself as well. But the thing is…..I don't want to be that way anymore. I want to be stronger, so that no more people die. And I'm starting with you two. Now please run!"

The two sisters turned to run away, the older a little less hesitant to leave, but at that moment Tsubako took flight towards the two, intending to do what she usually did when she found new prey. Ryou wouldn't let her have them without a fight though. He grabbed onto one of her lion-like paws and tried his best to pull her down, or at least slow her down some while the two girls ran, but the beat of her wings was far too powerful and she stayed airborne. "Let go of me, boy," she said in irritation. She kicked her hind leg hard and Ryou lost his grip, falling hard to the ground which knocked him unconscious.

Tsubako looked at his unconscious form with a smirk then went after the girls. There was not a soul around to aid the girls as Tsubako grabbed them in her paws and took off to parts unknown.

"Wake up boy," came a familiar voice sometime later. Ryou slowly opened his eyes and stared into a pair of small, green ones.

"Blaze?" he asked. The phoenix removed herself from her perch on his chest and watched him as he slowly arose. "Tsubako, did she?"

"Yes," She deadpanned. "She took off to an abandoned building downtown. Those girls are more than likely dead by now." She watched as Ryou leaned weakly against a tree and pulled out his cell phone to call Bethany's number.

"Beth, it's Ryou. I was running from Tsubako and ran into Chrissy and Mandy Hill. She took them instead. Blaze is here and she said that she knows where they are. I'm going after them...Well what else am I supposed to do Bethany? This is my fault. No, I'm going. Alright, I'm near the campus park." He grunted in pain as he hung up the phone and set himself in a somewhat more comfortable position.

"You plan to get them back, but how will you do so? You're a powerless human, remember?" Blaze asked with her head tilted in curiosity. "Or have you finally decided?"

"I…I don't want to use your power because you said it will eventually overpower my body and kill me. But because nobody else can use it but me, everyone that died since I first became Rekka, that's all my fault. They were all being killed while I was the only person who could do something to stop it. As long as I don't fight, that will continue. It isn't right and I can't just sit by anymore while that happens. I'll use your power to fight them until I'm no longer able to. I'll be Rekka until it kills me."

Blaze moved her beak into what could possibly be a smile and perched herself on Ryou's shoulder. "It pleases me to finally see you being decisive. During your fight with Mintauros I saw much potential in you as a fighter. You've been trained." At that Ryou tensed up. "Do not worry; we will talk of that another time."

...

So far Chrissy and Amanda had kept themselves alive by answering all of Tsubako's riddles correctly. As long as they answered them correctly, they would live. Problem was that she would ask them riddles until they got one wrong. She could wait as long as she had to, and judging by how scared the girls were she wouldn't have to wait for much longer. Humans. They always did break under pressure.

"You girls are very well educated to be able to last this long. Most people I...play with don't make it past the fourth question." She crossed her furry legs and licked her hand/paw sensually. She was really enjoying herself. "Next riddle. I welcome the day with a show of light, I stealthily came here in the night. I bathe the earthy stuff at dawn, but by the noon, alas! I'm gone. What am I? I'll give you one minute to talk amongst yourselves. Think hard now; your lives depend on it," she said with a smirk.

The two sisters held each other as the Sphinx observed them closely. "Chrissy, we can't keep this up forever."

"I know Mandy, but we have to. Otherwise, we'll die. Now come on. It can't be the sun since the sun doesn't come at night, nor does it disappear at noon."

"Could it be a shadow possibly? Shadows are supposed to disappear at noon when the sun is at its highest."

"What about at night though Mandy?" Chrissy asked her.

Amanda's breathing began to increase. "Moonlight can cast shadows, but what about 'bathe the earthy stuff at dawn'?" A light bulb suddenly lit up in Amanda's head. "I think it's morning dew. It comes during the early morning and it reflects the light of the sun. It covers the ground and is usually dried up by the afternoon."

Chrissy thought about it and agreed with her younger sister. "Let's go with that."

"Your minute is up. Let's see what you have come up with." Her eyes seemed to shine in anticipation. Either they would continue the game, or she would have a snack.

"Morning dew," they both said together.

The Sphinx stood up and clapped. "That is correct. You two are so much fun to play with. I'm almost going to feel sad when you eventually lose and I eat you. Humans like you are really hard to come by."

Amanda's fear turned into anger at this pointless game. "If you're just going to kill us anyway then what's the point in the riddles! Why don't you just kill us and get it over with!"

"Mandy!" Chrissy tried to hold down her younger sister as she struggled to break free of his older sister's hold. "Stop! This isn't going to help things!"

"I don't care! No matter what we do she's going to kill us! I'm not going to die playing this stupid, pointless game!"

"Pointless?" The two girls froze when they heard the slight growl in her voice. "You call my game pointless?" Tsubako's eyes were slitted now, her anger affecting her features. She crossed the distance between her and the two girls in an instant and struck Amanda with a vicious backhand that sent her to the ground.

"Amanda!" Chrissy cried. She was at her sister's side in a flash. Amanda had a cut across her cheek, but other wise was fine.

Tsubako's expression softened back to how it was prior and she sat down again, crossing her legs. "Alrighty girls, ready for some more riddles?"

"NO!" shouted Amanda.

"Wrong," she said with a finalizing glare in Amanda's direction. "You're first." She stood up quickly, her claws extending, and made a move to slash them across Amanda's body. Amanda was saved, however, when her sister jumped in front of her and took the blow with her body. Tsubako's claws raked savagely across her back and were covered with the older sister's blood. She collapsed into Mandy's lap and fell unconscious from the suddenly blow and loss of blood.

"CHRISSY!" She shook her sister frantically in a vain attempt to wake her up. "Wake up!"

"Ch." Tsubako flicked her arm, shaking the blood off of her claw. "Stupid girl. Guess she wanted to spare herself the sight of what I'm about to do to you."

Mandy's cried out with tears in her eyes and gently laid her sister's head down before jumping up and grabbing a nearby pipe to try and defend herself. "If you're gonna kill me then come on!"

"With pleasure," she said with a wide grin.

"AMANDA!" Ryou sprinted into the warehouse with Blaze flying in right behind him. He looked exhausted, having ran all of the way there. He looked and saw Chrissy face down, unconscious.

"Well if it isn't the little Rekka boy. Finally got him to do what you want little Blazikens?"

Ryou steeled his resolve. He knew that Blaze was right and that he would have to fight the Mythics. Otherwise, more people would get hurt like Chrissy and he could not just sit by and watch that happen when he alone had the power to prevent it. He stretched his arms out, palms to the sky. "Let's go, Blaze-san."

The phoenix smirked in accomplishment then flew at the boy in a burst of speed and flame. She spun around his torso once, the flames forming into the Rekka belt before flying above his head. Ryou snapped his arm upward and caught the phoenix by the wings before slotting her inside the belt. "HENSHIN!"

The flames shielded Ryou's body from Tsubaneko as the Rekka armor formed around him, a flash of his green eyepieces signaling his complete change before going into a fighting stance. Chrissy and Mandy could hardly believe their eyes as they watched the scene before them. It was one thing to have the campus pariah come to their aid, but a completely different thing to see him transform into an armored state to fight against the Sphinx like creature.

Said creature stalked towards the iron clad Ryou in a seductive strut, her bare breasts bouncing with each step. "So does the little boy want to fight me? Let's see what you got." She let out a arousing purr before changing to her more beastlike form and charging Ryou, claws bared. She slammed down with a roar, shaking the earth and disrupting the balance of everyone in the warehouse.

Ryou felt a momentary surge of fear but stood his ground before charging at the Sphinx Mythic and jumping at her with a fierce right hook. The monster quickly ducked to the side before turning around and kicked Ryou hard in the chest with her hind, lion-like legs. The blow knocked him back some but he was instantly on the offensive again with a high kick that slashed right across Tsubako's face.

Enraged, she started bounding around him, slashing at him as he spun around in an attempt to catch up. She was far too agile though. She pounced on him, knocking him to the ground and began to slash at his chest in a crazed fury.

"She's too strong!" Ryou covered his face in an attempt to protect his face, even though he was wearing a helmet. She whipped her tail around to strike Ryou, but the kamen rider caught it and yanked on it, causing her to lose her footing and stumble onto her face. "You bastard!" She shouted as she spit dirt from her mouth. "I'll skewer you!"

"I sincerely apologize for this." Ryou squeezed the tail in his hand and Tsubako's entire body was set on fire. As she screamed in agony, Ryou used the tail to flip her over his shoulder and slam Tsubako painfully into the ground before finally letting go of her.

Tsubako staggered as blood and smoke flew from her wounds. This Rekka was stronger than he let on and she could possibly beat him, but did not want to take a chance that she could be defeated. "Time for a hasty retreat."

Blaze, recognizing her movements, warned Ryou of what she was planning. "Ryou, finish her now! She's trying to escape!" Ryou nodded and ran towards the injured Mythic but was too late as she flapped her wings and took to the sky.

"Curses. We cannot catch her now."

"But the suit has wings too right? I remember them coming out when I kicked Mintauros."

Blaze was silent for a moment before explaining. "Those only come out during that attack. Because your power right now is too weak to attempt sustained flight we'll have to find another way to defeat her. Check on the humans for now."

Ryou nodded before unlatching Blaze from his belt and transforming back. He was at the Hill sisters' side in an instant. "Are you both alright?"

The younger sister, Amanda, nodded, but looked to her older sister, Chrissy, in concern. "That thing slashed my sister's back really bad. Help her!" Tears started to form in the corners of her eyes.

Without another word, Ryou carefully lifted Chrissy up and carried her away from the warehouse towards the closest hospital.

…...

Ryou and Mandy sat out in the lobby of a nearby hospital waiting for news on Chrissy. Mandy was unharmed and only suffered from shock at what had happened.

"Are you sure you're alright Mandy? I could go get you something." Ryou asked the short girl as they sat in the lobby. She dismissed his offer with a wave of her hand.

"It's alright. You don't have to go to all that trouble. I should be the one tending to you for saving us. Hard to believe that you were this kind of person, considering how introverted you are. So how long have you been, well, you know?"

"This all started a week ago. And to be honest, I had refused to fight again. But people were dying and I realized that I couldn't just sit around and continue my life as it was when I was the only one that could help people against these monsters. So I've decided to save as many people as I can. I'm glad I made it in time to save the two of you."

Mandy studied him for a second before leaving her seat and hugging him tightly. "Thank you Ryou. Chrissy was one of the few people around that didn't see you as strange like the others. But me, I'm just as bad as the others who picked on you. Yet you saved me anyway. I'm so sorry for how I was towards you."

Blushing heavily from the human contact, he slowly and awkwardly patted her back and thanked the stars that she only came up to the middle of his chest and could not see his face. It was at the moment that Beth walked in through the elevator door and saw the two of them embrace. She sighed, not used to seeing stuff like that when it came to Ryou. "Geez, at this rate he'll be up to neck in women."

The doctor came by a few seconds later to give Mandy an update on her sister. She was not in too terrible condition but would have to stay for a couple of days for monitoring. Bethany decided to go visit with Chrissy for a bit while Ryou went to look for clues on finding Tsubaneko. Ryou met Bethany in front of the elevator. "How long have you been here?"

"Long enough to see what a ladies man you really are. Who would've thought you'd be so good with women?" She laughed as Ryou seemed to glow crimson from embarrassment.

…...

The two of them walked outside, back towards campus as Blaze flew up and perched herself on Ryou's shoulder. "Any sigh of Tsubako?"

"Yes, She's still nearby, near the outskirts of town. She'll be harder to defeat now that she's out in the open. It would've been better to kill her in the warehouse where she wouldn't have the room to build up enough speed to take flight. Now it will be much harder. We have to find a way to make you faster so you can at least catch up with her while she's in flight." At this moment they were near the front of the dormitory when Nick came out. He hung his arms and breathed out, exhaustion evident. Blaze quickly flew away to avoid attention and Ryou waved to his friend.

"Hey, Nick, why are you looking so tired? Rough day at practice?"

Instead of answering right away, he gave a rather large grin and pulled out a bottle of water that was stuffed in his pocket. "I skipped practice today so I could work on something for you. Well attempt to anyway." Ryou was confused. Nick answered his unasked question with a smirk. "I found your scooter and I've been trying to fix it, with no results. It's really old so I haven't been able to find most of the partsI need for it anywhere, not even in the auto department. I can come show you what I've done so far though."

Nick walked back towards the back of the dormitory where the automobiles were stored and Ryou followed. _"He must have gotten it from near the warehouse when Tsubako was away. Talk about _lucky."

Unbeknownst to the both of them, Blaze had followed, her curiosity getting the better of her. "What is this 'scooter' that they speak of?"

Ryou's eye twitched as he looked down at what was left of his bike. It was in pieces, like something had ripped it apart; not in the somewhat better condition it was in after he had wrecked it that night with bethany. "What happened? This is...wha...NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" he screamed into the sky. The people nearby all covered their ears as his voice threatened to split their eardrums. Even Nick quickly covered his ears in surprise, not know that Ryou could even get that loud. He must have really loved that scooter.

"Uh, Ryou? Are...are you okay?"

"My father's going to kill me. Or worse, make me do his strict training regiment." He looked from the scooter to Nick. "What happened to it?"

"Believe it or not, I got a call from Bethany asking me to go and get it for you along with her's. Found it near that abandoned warehouse the police were investigating the other night, in the middle of a large footprint. My guess is whatever the footprint belonged to stomped on it. There's not much I can do to fix it, but I figured it would be worth a shot," he answered.

Ryou sighed. "Thanks Nick, but there's no way anyone would be able to fix this. What am I gonna do?" Nick quickly got him into a loose headlock and playfully ruffled his hair, like a elder brother would do to a younger brother. "Hey!"

"Don't worry about it, Ryou. I'm sure we can do something about it." Just stay here for a second while I go look for some tools." Ryou nooded as Nick went towards a nearby toolbox set in the parking area just in case anyone's car broke down. At this moment, Blaze flew down and perched herself on Ryou's head.

"Blaze?"

"What is this contraption?" she inquired. The small phoenix tilted her head in a curious, bird-like fashion as she eyed the nearly demolished scooter up and down.

"It was my scooter. I used to ride it around everywhere. It was passed down to me from my father, and he asked me to take care of it. He's going to blow his top when he sees what happened to it." At that moment a student on a motorcycle passed by on his way to class. It caught Blaze's attention and she looked from it to the scooter, an idea forming in her ancient mind.

"This is the solution on how to catch Tsubako!"

"Eh?" said Ryou in confusion.

At that moment, Blaze perked up again, he eyes holding a fire behind her small irises. "Speaking of that accursed feline. Come Ryou, and bring your contraption!" Ryou made a face like he was going to object, but after feeling a small spike of Blaze's killer aura he shut he mouth as dragged his scooter away from other people as quickly as he could.

When they were out of sight of people, Blaze suddenly flew above the scrapheap and breathed her flames on it. "Blaze, what are you doing!"Ryou shouted in shock. His father's old scooter was already probably beyond repair, and now she was melting it into liquid metal. The heat of the flames was much too intense for him to try and stop her. He started to close his eyes as the flames began to die down, terrified of what he might see, but just before his eyes closed completely he saw something shine through the fire. His eyes immediately shot open as the remaining flames were absorbed into what used to be Ryou's scooter, and revealed a new motorcycle. "W-w-wha? How?"

"Just be silent and get on. We can use this to catch up to Tsubaneko." Ryou was going to ask more questions, but just followed orders and got on the bike. His helmet that had been left on the scooter before had also undergone a change. Like his new bike, it was mostly black with yellow and red flames dancing around it. On the sides of the helmet were two bird wings. He put the helmet on and slid the visor over his eyes. If anyone were to walk by and see the young man on the bike, they would automatically think it were someone else.

_"I have no idea how to ride this thing. Hope it works like my scooter."_ He tried to start it like he would normally start his scooter and to his surprise it roared to life without a hitch. "Here we go." He revved it up and shot off like a rocket. He screamed into his helmet as the speed of the bike threatened to throw him off. He clenched his fists as tightly as he could and fought for control of the bike and finally got it under his control before he ran over someone. "Holy! This thing is a monster."

Blaze chose that moment to chuckle to herself as she finally caught up with him. He had shot off so fast she didn't even have time to register what had happened, but seeing Ryou's reaction in her mind's eye had put her in a better mood. But now it was time to get serious. "I used my mystic fire to transform your contraption. I chose this form because it seemed bigger, faster, and much more powerful. It seems I was correct in my assumption. Now follow me Ryou!" She zoomed off and Ryou very carefully rode his new bike off of campus and towards the freeway heading out of town.

He weaved in and out of cars with grace, getting the hang of riding a motorcycle very easily. The familiar feeling he had gotten the other night came over him again and he raised an arm up, the speed of the bike keeping him stable. "Blaze!" he shouted through his helmet. The bird heard him with her acute hearing and flew around his waist, forming the belt and flew into his outstretched hand. "HENSHIN!" Slide. Snap. In two moves he was enveloped in flames and transformed into Rekka. _"Let's go!"_

…_..._

On the highway a family of four was enjoying a quiet, relaxing ride out of town. The wife was reading a magazine while her husband hummed to himself, their son and daughter playing a game of rock paper scissors in the back seat. "Beat you again." Said the girl, being the older of the two.

"No fair," her younger brother pouted. He glared at his sister as she smirked triumphantly at him, but dropped his jaw when he saw a costumed man on a bike pull up beside them. "Uh, Sis. Look," he said as he pointed at the window behind her. The sister turned and her jaw also dropped.

Ryou looked to his left and noticed the kid staring at him. He gave an awkward wave and hit the accelerator, shooting past the car and farther into traffic, where there seemed to be a large traffic jam up ahead. "Can't afford to stop now, so I'll have to go right through." He hit the accelerator again, losing his balance a bit because of not being used to the power of motorcycle. Up ahead he could see where the traffic jam originated. The Highway patrol set up a roadblock and were advising people to stay in their vehicles. "Blaze?"

"Ah. She's definitely ahead of this blockade. I hear small explosions up ahead as well."

"Gunfire." Ryou said to himself.

An officer up ahead saw Rekka coming towards him and called for none other than Lieutenant Stanford. "What's the problem, officer?"

"Someone's coming through the blockade. I don't think he has any intention of stopping."

"Then make him stop dammit! We can't let any civilians past this point with that winged monster around!" Stanford ran out into the path of Ryou in the hopes that he would too afraid to hit someone and stop. "STOP YOUR BIKE! IT'S DANGEROUS UP AHEAD!"

"It's the officer from last night!" Ryou realized.

"We can't afford to stop now. He'll move." Ryou nodded and didn't slow down. Stanford realized that he was not going to stop and jumped out of the way, but not without getting a good look at him as he zoomed by.

"What the hell was that?" He questioned as Ryou continued down the highway. A few officers ran over to the Lieutenant in concern trying to see if he was okay. "Ch. I have to be losing my damn mind." He hopped off of the ground and jumped into his squad car that was nearby, and began to chase after Rekka.

Ryou could finally hear the gunshots as the neared the area where a squad of officers were trying to shoot down Tsubako with no results. In the air, she could dodge them with relative ease, and the few that did hit her did no damage whatsoever. She was just toying with them, Ryou realized. "I need to hurry."

The officers on the ground were running out of ammunition and most were becoming very discouraged, some even on the verge of running away in the face of certain defeat and certain death. Tsubako decided that she was done playing with them and landed on the ground in front of them. She shifted to her humanoid form and seductively stalked towards them. "Ready to play with me boys?" Many of them began to back away from her in any direction that they could, making a wide U of officers with her in the middle. Suddenly the mighty roar of a motorcycle could be heard as Rekka jumped his bike over the officers in the back and slammed into Tsubako. The Sphinx was taken completely by surprise and rolled painfully across the ground. She looked up angrily and growled at Ryou and he skidded sideways to a stop, on side of him facing Tsubako and the other side facing the officers so that they could all clearly see him. Like the kids from earlier, all of their jaws dropped.

"YOU!" She roared.

He held his fist out in front of him and a small fireball formed before he closed his hand tightly into a fist, intense rays of light shining through the slight spaces between his fingers. "Be reborn in the fires of my blaze!"

With an enraged roar Tsubako shifted to her bestial form and took off into the sky. Rekka quickly revved up his bike and gave chase after her. The officers all looked at each other in both awe and confusion before a car could be heard honking behind them. They all got out of the way as officer Stanford plowed through the opening in the crowd of officers and continued to keep chase with Rekka and Tsubako. "Gotta keep them in my sights. I have to know just what the hell's going on here." A beeping sound came from his radio. "This is Lieutenant Stanford and I am in pursuit of target. Over."

"Lieutenant, this is officer Bronze from the squad in charge of assault on the creature. We're not sure who that guy on the bike was, but he definitely saved us so this is something we have to see for ourselves also." Stanford looked behind him and saw nearly a dozen squad cars following behind him. "Well at least I know that he's on our side," he said with a smirk.

"Ryou! Fire ball!" Blaze shouted.

"Hai!" Ryou focused hard and formed a fire ball in his hand, which he threw towards Tsubako. The Mythic felt it coming and swooped under it right before it hit her. Ryou threw a second one, but she dodged it also.

"Damn that child. I can't seem to outrun him." Tsubako said to herself as she continued to dodge more fire balls. Growing frustrated she flew down and tried to swipe at him with her claws. He swerved around her on his bike as she continued to grab at him. "Be still damn you!"

"Only when you pay for what you've done!" As she came down a final time, he charged his fist with fire and punched her in the gut with the strongest fire ball he could muster, greatly injuring her. She gasped as the blow took the wind out of her and she nearly dropped to the ground, but managed to find the strength to fly upwards.

"Where did his strength come from? I can't beat him." She began to fly higher in an attempt to get away from him.

"You're not getting away. Too many people have died because of you!" The familiar feeling of resolution filled his body the same way it had when he had fought Mintauros and his courage gave him strength. The side panels on the bike suddenly opened out like a pair of wings and flapped once, sending itself skyward towards Tsubako.

Tsubako looked behind her and saw that somehow Rekka's motorcycle had gained wings and was currently heading her way. "No! I have to get away!"

"HAAAAAA!" Screamed Ryou as he charged Rekka's energy into the bike and caused it to flap it's wings a second time. This time it gained a fiery aura and sent a flaming funnel towards Tsubako, trapping her in the middle. The Sphinx mythic struggled as hard as she could but could not break out through the sides of the fiery tornado. Ryou charged even more power into the bike, but as its wings came up for one final flap, his own wings appeared and opened out. At the same time, the two pairs of wings flapped. Ryou flew off of the bike as it shot forward into the funnel and slammed into Tsubako, causing her to shoot painfully towards the opening at the opening end of the funnel.

Now severely injured, she shot out of the funnel and into the open air, only to see Rekka fly over the end of the funnel and look at her. The anger she could feel from the boy in the armor was staggering. She knew she was dead. "NOOOOO!"

"THIS IS FOR ALL PEOPLE YOU'VE HURT!" Rekka's wings appeared once more and shot him down towards her. "HAAAAAAA!" His foot erupted into flames as it impacted into Tsubako with a immense force as his kick gained speed and send them both crashing into the ground, kicking a mountain of dust into the air. When the dust cleared Rekka was on his feet with a charred , burning corpse of Tsubano underneath his still flaming foot. The force of the attack had caused another wing shaped crater to appear under the dead body.

In the belt buckle, Blaze was wide eyed at what had just occurred. The combination that Ryou had just put together was even more devastating than the attack he had performed on Mintauros and should have been far beyond his capabilities. "Okibi Ryou. What are you?" She thought to herself.

The roar of Rekka's bike was heard as it landed on the ground with a soft thud beside Ryou. He got on a prepared to ride off, but stopped when he heard the cocking of several guns. The officers from before had followed him and most of them had their guns trained at him. Lieutenant Stanford walked forward and motioned for the men to put their guns down. "Put your damn guns down you idiots! Do you not remember that this guy saved your lives earlier? Besides, I doubt those bullets would do much good anyway." He looked to Rekka and flashed a smirk as he nodded his head to the side. "Get outta here."

Inside of his armor, Ryou smiled to himself. He gave a simple nod and turned his bike around, heading back towards the direction he'd come from. He stopped when he reached Stanford, surprising the officer. Taking his thumb and pointing it to his chest he said, "You can call me Rekka. Kamen Rider Rekka." He tried to deepen his voice a bit so that the lieutenant would not recognize it, although the filtering of the helmet already helped out with that.

Stanford blinked in surprise and gave another smirk. "Thanks for saving my men, Rekka." Rekka gave another nod and zoomed off. "Men!" He turned to his fellow officers. "I think we may have just witnessed a real superhero at work here. Let's go inspect the scene".

…...

Rekka zoomed away from the scene as quickly as possible, in a hurry to get back to campus. Since he left without saying a word, Nick would probably be really confused. And then he would have to explain the bike. Speaking of which. "Blaze, I need you to change the bike so nobody recognizes it when I'm not Rekka if that's not too much trouble."

"Understood. If would probably be detrimental to our mission if many more people found out about you." Ryou slid Blaze out of the belt slot and Ryou changed back, but instead of riding a motorcycle, Ryou was now riding a new red and yellow scooter.

"You turned it back into a scooter?" Ryou asked.

"I thought this fit your personality better. You would not look normal on such a powerful machine. Do not worry though. Whenever you transform into Rekka or whenever you feel you need the additional speed, it will transform into the Blazing Wing. I find it to be a fitting name considering what it is capable of. Now we must get you back to school."

After some time and clever, elaborate lies to Nick about where his old scooter went and how he had gotten a new one, Ryou went back to the hospital to visit Chrissy. "How's your sister?" he asked Amanda as he walked towards Chrissy's hospital room.

"Much better now. She's woken up and was just asking about you so I thought I'd see if you were still around. You look tired."

"I'm alright. Can I go on in?" He asked, reaching for the door handle but waiting on permission. The younger sister nodded and the two of them walked in. Chrissy was indeed awake and sitting up watching television where a news report was playing. Bethany was also there watching the news report with her arms crossed. As soon as she turned and saw Ryou she scowled and walked over to him.

"Why didn't you tell me you had gone! I had to watch you be awesome on the news." she asked in a forced whisper. Ryou gave a confused look, so Bethany turned him towards the television. Playing was a video of Rekka chasing down Tsubako while shooting fireballs. From the the distance and angle the footage had to have come from one of the news helicopters. It zoomed in as the camera caught footage of Blazing Wing shooting into the air and ended with Rekka stomping Tsubako into the highway below. The headline flashing by at the top of the screen said "Just who or what is this Kamen Rider Rekka?"

"Whoops?" said Ryou with a nervous shrug. Before Bethany could put him in a headlock, Amanda blocked her.

"Kill him later. Chrissy's been want to talk to him for a while now and I don't want you to beat up the guy who saved our butts just because you didn't get to see him fight."

"Fine. But I'm watching the next fight or else I'll be kicking your butt," Bethany pouted.

Chrissy shifted on the bed, wincing a bit as her wound ached. "Ryou, I should have respected your privacy and because of me both me and my sister were put in danger. If you hadn't come we would both be dead right now. I don't know how to thank you for saving us."

"Oh I know how!" Amanda said with a bright, yet mischievous smile. Now, whenever she smiled like that a series of mishaps would always occur. This was no different. She suddenly jumped behind Ryou and pushed him into her sister. She hugged him instinctively which he wasn't ready for so in his surprise he screamed. His scream was heard outside by some passing by nurses who ran into the room expecting to see Chrissy in pain, not Ryou in an awkward position. The said nurses slowly backed out of the room without saying a word and the five heads already in the room snapped in the direction of the open door. Why five heads? Well at that moment Blaze flew in and perched herself on the windowsill and she was now uncharacteristically snickering.

The two girls in the room spotted the bird and eyed it as it laughed at the scene. "These two humans are far more amusing that any of the others I've met recently." Mandy's jaw dropped and Chrissy's finger shot forward like Ryou bike had earlier.

"I told you it could talk Mandy!"

…...

While this was going on, Cadet Dirk had been assigned to investigate the warehouse some more, but so far he hadn't found anything more than they had found during their initial investigation. It was weird being at a place where only a few days ago a mass of dead bodies was found. The thought made him stop look over towards the area where they had found it. "I wanted to become a cop to prevent things like that from happening, but now it just seems so pointless. So many people are dead because of these monsters and the only one who can do anything about it is this Rekka guy. He's lucky he's able to make a difference here." He turned away from the spot with disdain and traveled up the staircase, or what was left of it. _"What happened here?"_ he wondered. They had been over this spot over and over again but now that he was alone with quiet to actually observe and think, he noticed that it looked like a huge fight had happened here. Actually, it looked a little worse than before. It made even more sense now that they knew who had killed the minotaur a few days prior. "So they fought here. That explains the noises that people were hearing."

He continued up the stair and down a hallway. All of the rooms down the hallway were empty except for the one at the very end of the corridor. He stepped in and immediately looked at the panel on the far side of the room. Some of his fellow officers had already been in this room but this was his first time stepping foot inside. It looked as though it was supposed to hold something, but was now empty, like the rest of the warehouse. "Why the hell am I here? I knew that there was nothing in this warehouse, but I came anyway." A noise off to the side made him jump, but it was only a mouse. The mouse looked up at him and ran through a hole in the wall. Was there another room behind that wall? Dirk walked over to the wall and tried to peek in through the crack, but all he could see was a blue light. "How did they miss this?" Looking around and not finding anything big enough to try and break a door down with, he decided to use the biggest thing in the room. Himself.

"Yah!" He ran full sprint and slammed his body into the wall. It creaked and gave way to the force of his tackle and he rolled into the hidden room. He looked around but saw that it was pretty much exactly like the adjacent room, nothing but a table. But what was on the table made this whole trip worth taking. The light that Dirk saw thought the wall came from an object on the table. It was a belt looking object, sitting on a platform of blue light, possibly so whoever was in here could work in the darkness.

The belt looked very advanced, but also looked like it was missing some pieces. The guy who was working on it was probably in that pile of corpses. Next to it was a book of some kind. Never one to let his curiosity not get the better of him, he picked up both the book and belt ,which shined for a split second at his touch without him noticing, up and looked more closely at him. "These look like blueprints, but for what?" He looked at the top of the blueprints at the title set in a bold black print above the picture of a dragon-like creature. "Kamen Rider Wyvern."

**Dun Dun Dun! Do we have a second rider on the way? We'll find out. Next time: Ryou goes home for some super intense hellish training. Now be sure to review or else zombie Mintauros will stomp on you!**


	5. An Okibi Homecoming

**Phew, it's been a long time since I uploaded this story but it's because my Hard drive crashed last fall and it took me a little while to get it replaced and I also I was involved in several plays at my school which took up the vast majority of my free time. Add all that plus school and homework and...well you get my point. To make up for it I plan to update four chapters of Rekka and another story each before my summer ends since I'm at a university now and my summer extends to August 26th. If you're fans of Ryou you'll probably really like this chapter, but if you're not you'll probably like it anyway. Many things are explain and more questions are asked so without further distractions let's get to it.**

**Disclaimer: Pyrorynox does not own Kamen Rider. Are you happy Toei? Bastards.**

All the students held their hands in prayer as they waited in the lunch room for word on the future plans of the school. In the middle of the room sat three in particular who were in debate on the subject.

"So do you think they'll close the school down?" asked Nick. "It would be great to get a break for a while and I would really like to see my folks considering all that's happened the past few days. My parents have called me about their concerns with me staying here after that Minotaur attacked."

"Likewise," said Bethany. Nick only flinched slightly at the sound of her voice. He was finally starting to get used to having her in such close proximity without fear of a sudden fangirl attack. He didn't know what Ryou did, but he had really somehow changed the girl for the better. Bethany was hoping that they would get some time off, even if it was a really short break. The place had been dangerous over the past week.

Ryou in particular was feeling kind of exhausted, having been the one to secretly beat the two beasts. He was now officially putting his life on the line and there was no turning back. But he was okay with that as long as he could save as many people as he could. But right now he was the most exhausted out of anyone. Blaze had told he and Bethany the day after Tsubako's attack about the man who Bethany had met at the warehouse.

_"I suppose that I should tell you about the human you met that night, girl." she said to them._

_Bethany scoffed in impatience. "Well that would be nice." This made the tiny bird shoot flames from her nostrils which in turn made Bethany shut up with an eep._

_"The human you met was an associate of mine named Dr. Luke White. He was a renowned scholar on mythological creatures and a genius technician. He was working on a way to make the Rekka armor safe for humans but Mintauros found out about the warehouse and we had to run, but Dr. White was caught. He had hidden the belt in a place only accessible by humans. Not even I could get to it. He did it to keep it safe. He was also working on another project after doing research on the belt and Rekka's abilities, but he was very quiet about it. Sadly, I don't believe it was completed before his death. He was the first human I've come to respect in such a long time."_

_"So what exactly are the Mythics after?" Ryou asked._

_"Some of the ones I've defeated with other users of Rekka were just like Mintauros and Tsubako, killing for enjoyment and no real reason, but there are others who seemed to be...searching for something. For what I am not quite sure. But I'm sure we will find out."_

Ryou was taken out of his thoughts by a beeping sound from overhead, one of the suspended television monitors used to display important announcements around the campus had turned itself on and text could be seen scrolling across it. "After a memorial service for the students who were lost in the attack, all students will be dismissed from campus until the administration can decide what to do for the foreseeable future."

The sounds of cheers were absent from the students as they thought of friends and in some cases family that were not with them anymore. Ryou in particular thought long and hard about just how many people were now dead.

"If I had just accepted earlier then I could have saved a lot of people." Only Bethany could hear him though. She gave him a little punch on the shoulder and a look that said 'don't blame yourself.' He nodded and stood up to leave.

"Where you goin, Ryou?" asked Nick.

"Well we're all going home aren't we? I'm going to go pack". He had an uncharacteristically determined look on his face as he turned and walked away. Nick stared after him curiously.

"That's really weird. He normally hates the very thought of going home. I practically had to drag him out of the dorm once kicking and screaming because he was so afraid of going."

"What?" Bethany asked. "Why would he be afraid of going home? Doesn't he miss his family?"

"Of course he does. I don't know much about them and I've never met them, but sometimes he talks in his sleep. Very loudly. He calls out to his parents, but for some reason the thought of going home completely terrified him until now. It was almost like he was gonna die if he went home."

"Hmmm. Interesting." She got a look on her face that spoke of mischievousness. It unnerved Nick slightly, having many times been the target of such a look. But it looked like her sights were set on Ryou this time.

When Nick saw Ryou again he was sitting on the couch staring at his phone worriedly. "Hey, are you trying to develop heat vision or what?"

"Oh, hey," Ryou said looking up at his friend before looking back down at his phone. "My Kaa-san hasn't called this week."

Nick raised an eyebrow and sat down in the arm chair near the couch. "Are we talking about the same mother who calls on the exact same day every single week, at the exact same time down to the very second?" Ryou nodded. "Dude, she's never not called in all the time I've known you."

"I know. I think something's going on at home. Normally I wouldn't think anything extremely bad, but considering what we've all seen the past several days I'm really worried that something may have happened. I was going to go home anyway, but now I have to make sure my family is okay."

"Ryou, you know I could go with you if you want just in case. I'm sure my parents would understand." Ryou shook his head and grinned at Nick.

"No. I'm sure they're worried sick about you and I would be too. If anything happens I'll call for help."

"You better. You know you could always call for that Kamen Rider Rekka guy who was on the news. Did you hear about that? Apparently he's the one who killed that minotaur and that flying cat that kidnapped the Hill sisters. He sounded so cool!" Ryou chuckled nervously as Nick stood up and started doing fake Karate while yelling like Bruce lee. Looked like Rekka had a big fan in Nick.

…...

Ryou threw his last shirt into a bag and zipped it up before going outside and putting the bag into the side panel on his scooter. It had been a couple of days since the announcement came about the memorial service and said service had ended an hour ago. There was crying and screaming, and some angry tears from his own eyes. But now the easy part was over. It was time to get stronger so that this hopefully never happened again. He put on his helmet and prepared to get on his scooter when a group of students walked by.

"Hey Okibi, Nice scooter. That thing gonna get you all the way back to Japan?" the guy who said it laughed while the other looked at him like the idiot he was.

"How can you talk about someone like that when you live in a trailer park?" came a voice. Bethany came to Ryou's rescue as she pulled up on her own scooter. "I can't believe you. We just buried our classmates yet you haven't learned anything. Even your friends have enough sense not to act so immature right now." The guy scoffed and walked off with his friends.

Ryou looked at Bethany with a questioning stare as he got on his scooter. "Bethany, shouldn't you be heading home now? Don't you live far away?"

"Well yes, but I talked to my parents and they said I could stay at a friend's house for a while. So let's go." She revved up her scooter.

"Wait what?"

"Yup. I'm going to your place. If you have a problem with that then too bad." Ryou wanted to say no, but couldn't find it in himself to do so.

"Fine, but you'll have to ride on my scooter. You'll find out why on the way."

"Okay," she said as she took her stuff from her scooter and stuffed it into Ryou's before getting on it behind him. And they took off from the campus and towards the edge of town. Bethany thought the scooter ran much smoother than a normal scooter. Speaking of which, where had he even got it from? She had never seen it before. "Um, Ryou, where did you get the-"

"I think we're far enough away now. So how do I do this again? Oh yeah, with my will." He went silent and focused hard before his scooter became engulfed in flames. This made Bethany scream as loud as she could until the flames subsided and the scooter was replaced by the Blazing Wing motorcycle. It roared as it zoomed down the road even faster than the scooter had. Bethany held on tightly and pressed her forehead to Ryou's back.

"The bird?" she inquired.

"The bird," he responded with a laugh.

…...

They had driven for a few hours when Ryou stopped the bike in the middle of the road. It was consumed in flames again before it changed back into the scooter and they drove into the nearby hillside.

"Why'd you change it back? I was having fun."

"Well this scooter once belonged to my father, and when he sees me on this he won't know that it's his and there's no telling what he'll do then if he thinks I replaced the scooter that he's had for decades. Let alone if he thinks I replaced it with a motorcycle. He's already going to obliterate me."

"Well he can't be that bad, can he?" She took one look at Ryou's face and knew he was serious. "Well, um, let's go."

They turned off into a thickly wooded area and set off down a long dirt road. It was much different than the kinds of wood that Bethany was used to. But as she looked through the tree she could see smoke.

"Hey Ryou. Is there some kind of timber work going on around here?"

"What?" He suddenly skidded to a halt, nearly throwing Bethany off and looked around.

"What the hell, Ryou!? You could've hurt me!"

"You saw smoke?" Bethany pointed back to where she'd seen them and followed Ryou as he got off the scooter and ran back to look. "That's coming from Takamine's house. Come on Bethany." They ran as fast as they could towards the source of the smoke, a destroyed house. It looked like a wrecking ball hit the place hard. His brow furrowed as he looked upon the scene. "What could've done this?" He looked around and noticed that a lot of the trees around the area had been knocked down also. "Something definitely isn't right here. It's almost like a tank ran through this place."

"Is Takamine a friend of yours? I hope he's alright."

"No, he's more like the closest thing I've ever had to an older brother. He and his family have lived here for as long as I can remember. Look, if he's alright then he'll be at the main part of the estate. We need to hurry to my home to make sure everything's okay." They went back to the scooter and drove off further into the trees until they reached what looked like a small, but impressive looking community. "Finally home."

"There are a lot of houses here, Ryou. Which one's yours?"

"All of these smaller houses are actually a part of a much larger estate. It's kind of like a safe haven for those in dire need, and anyone who wants to learn to fight from my Grandfather"

The door to one of the houses opened and out came a man in cargo pants and a thick coat. He yawned then turned his eyes in Ryou's direction. He eyes went wide. "Ryou?"

"Take-niisan!" He ran up to the man and hugged him tightly. "I saw your house on my way here and I thought something may have happened to you and your wife. What happened?"

Takemine sighed and looked around before shouting as loud as he could. "HEY EVERYBODY! RYOU'S BACK!"

From all of the smaller houses families piled out by the truckload, all showing great excitement over Ryou being home. "Ryou, who are all these people?" Bethany asked confused.

"They're people who live on my family's land. They're kind of like my family. Since we had so much space we decided to make a sort of safe haven for those who had no homes. As long as they take care of the land, they can stay as long as they want, and a lot of them are of my family's...occupation."

"Are you going to see your folks, Ryou? Your family really missed you a lot. Your mother especially since she hasn't been able to contact anyone. None of us have been able to get any contact to the outside world. As good as it is to see you, you probably shouldn't have come back." said Takemine.

"Take, come with me and tell me what's going on. I have to see Ojii-sama," he said ominously.

At this, everyone but Bethany went silent in both surprise and confusion. They began to talk amongst themselves as Ryou walked further down the road with Bethany and Takemine.

"This happened one night about a week ago during a really bad blizzard that came out of nowhere. Nobody really thought much of it at first, just a regular blizzard. But when it stopped that's when the roaring started," He nearly walked into Ryou as he had stopped suddenly. "Yeah, I figured you'd have that reaction. We're not sure where the thing came from, but if I had to describe it the closest thing I could think of would be a Yeti. Your mother's friend Sue was the first one to see it. Nobody really believed her though until it showed up out of nowhere in front of my house. Ryou, it smashed through it like tissue paper. I've never seen anything so strong. Me and my wife managed to get out before it fell on top of us but when we started to run it chased us. If the others here hadn't heard and ran out to see what's going on we'd probably be dead right now. It stopped when it saw everyone and just vanished like snow in the wind."

Ryou looked at Bethany and grimaced. _"So these monsters have even found their way out here. It's a really good thing I came home."_ "Take, is that the only time it's shown up? Please tell me everybody else who's come into contact with this thing was as lucky as you."

Takemine turned his head out towards the woods and punched his fist into his open palm. "That fucking thing. It's come out every night since then and it's been knocking down houses with entire families inside. Maybe two or three a night. We managed to save some people, but very few compared to how many died. Your father decided to move everybody over to the main area because it's the safest place. We've even tried to get help but anybody who tries to leave gets killed by it even in the day time. We know it's that thing because when day breaks we find their bodies frozen in blocks of ice. It let's people in though. More fun for it I guess."

Ryou was visibly shaking, his hands clenched tightly around the handles of his scooter making his hands pale under the strain he was putting them under. This worried Bethany as she, nor anyone else at their school including Nick had ever seen him even get remotely irritated, let alone this angry. It scared her a bit. "Ryou?"

"I have to see my mother and father now." he started walking again with waiting for either of the other two to respond to what he said.

When they stopped again it was in front of a considerably sized mansion. "Um Ryou, who lives here?" Bethany asked with growing curiosity.

"I do," he simply responded. Bethany looked back and forth between the mansion and Ryou with a gaping mouth.

"This place is huge!" Ryou shook his head, making Bethany only more confused.

"Legend has it that a monster used to inhabit these lands, but it suddenly vanished and never came back. The local people were so spooked about this place that they abandoned it. My family came and claimed it as our own. After a while the person who really owned the land came and tried to take it, but once he saw how well we were using it, he gave our family the deed so we legally own the land."

"That's amazing. You live in the extravagant place and you own it with no strings attached. Why wouldn't you want to come home more often?"

Ryou looked up at the front door of the mansion. "Because of my Grandfather." At that moment the doors of the mansion opened and out stepped a beautiful blonde woman who looked to be in her mid to late twenties. Upon seeing Ryou she gave a look of surprise then smiled warmly as she walked down the steps to the pair.

"Who is she? Is she like the house keeper or something? Because if she is, that would be a shame. She's so beautiful."

"No, that's my mother. Okibi Maria. Mama," he said happily with tears in his eyes as his mother ran up and swept him up a loving hug.

"Oh how I have missed you my little robin. I was hoping you wouldn't come considering what's been going on, but I had no way of contacting you since the yeti knocked down the cell tower. It's been too long since you've been home. Oh my. What's wrong?" She looked down at him and wiped away his tears with her thumb.

"It's nothing. I'm just really happy to see you. Like you said, it's been too long since I've been home and Take nii-san told me what was going on. I'm relieved to see you safe."

_"He can't tell her that he's nearly died twice in the past week.. It's understandable that he would want his mom to comfort him."_ Bethany though to herself as she stood behind the pair. Maria looked over and saw Bethany and nearly squealed. "What the?"

"Oh my little Ryou has a girlfriend! And she's so cute! Wait until I tell your father; he'll be so proud." She nearly knocked Ryou out of the way just to put Bethany in a death hug. Bethany started gasping and wheezing for air as Ryou Takemine starting laughing, glad that his mother was not doing that to him for once.

"I'm/She's not my girlfriend," the two said at the same time.

"She's not?" both Takemine and his mother asked, the latter dropping Bethany to her hind. "Aww, that's such a shame little Ryou. She's so cute."

"Tell me about it. I thought maybe you had grown up a bit since we last saw you." He reached over and ruffled Ryou's long, untidy hair as Ryou tried to swat his hand away.

"Mother, not to be rude, but where's father and Jii-sama? I need to talk to them about what's been going on."

Maria looked out towards the forest. "Your Grandfather is in the forest and you Father is inside getting ready to go join him. We've been trying to hunt down that thing in the forest during the day since it only seems to come out of the open during the night time. It's been pretty elusive though. Not even your father has been able to find it. Although, he hasn't been able to track like he used to since he passed down his partner to you."

"Partner?" asked Bethany.

Ryou suddenly look over to his scooter and blanched. "Oh man. If he sees what happened to it he'll kill me."

Takemine finally took notice of the unfamiliar scooter and whistled. "Now that you mention that is a pretty sweet looking ride. Maybe your dad won't be too angry since that old thing looked like it was gonna blow up at any second anyway."

Bethany look back and forth between the two Okibi's and looked at Ryou's scooter. "Are you talking about that old, piece-of-crap pathetic excuse for a scooter that looked like satan crapped on, puked on, and peed on? Your dad gave you that?"

"Yes, that was his father's and it was given to Ryou as a gift. And-! Where is it?" asked Maria in a panic. She looked down and saw the scooter that they rode in on and looked behind her towards the door. "What happened to your father's scooter?"

"Well that has to do with one of the reasons why I'm home. I'm just hoping my father understands."

"I don't think that will be too much of a problem." The two young adults turned to the voice in the doorway as Maria nearly broke her neck trying to turn around. In the doorway was a tall man with long black hair that almost reached his shoulders, but his bangs had been tucked back behind his ears. His eyes were green like Ryou's but cold as they looked from Ryou to the scooter and his chiseled jaw was clenched in what looked to be anger. But before Maria and Ryou could let out the screams that were threatening to explode from their throats the man laughed and casually walked down the steps with his hands in his pockets.

"Hello, son. It's rare that I see you come home. What's with that look? You and Maria look like you were both expecting me to come out on a chariot pulled by demonic horses or something." He put his hands on the seat of the scooter and closed his eyes. "Hello, old friend. You look different now, but I know my partner when I see it."

"Yamato? This is your scooter?" Maria breathed out in relief as her husband nodded. "Ryou what happened to it?"

"Well that kind of has to do with why I'm here. It was totaled about a week ago beyond repair, but a friend of mine offered to melt it down and use it to build a new one."

"It's totally my fault!" Bethany said. "We didn't exactly get along until recently and I kind of made him wreck it. I'd be willing to pay for any damages that I caused before it was rebuilt."

"Nah, don't sweat it. This old bird was on its last legs when I gave it to Ryou. The only reason it was still functioning up til last week was probably because Ryou took good care of it, which is why I gave it to him in the first place. But my old friend has been brought back from the brink. I think this is a sign that it truly belongs to Ryou now. Besides, I can tell it's happy. Nice to meet you Bethany. I heard everything from beside the door."

"O-oh, well it's nice to meet you Mr. Okibi."

"Yamato is fine. If you call me 'Mr.' all the time I'm gonna start feeling as old as my father. Hahaha. Ryou, I'm not sure why you came home after so long, but you picked a rough time. Your grandfather is in the forest trying to track the yeti. I was gonna get some of the townspeople and try to find him. The old man is tough, but he's also stubborn as a dragon. Everybody stay here til I get back. You know the drill, Maria. Doors locked and guns ready just in case. Ryou, you too."

"No, I want to go with you to find Jii-san." Ryou put his helmet back on and got on his scooter.

"Well that isn't like you, Ryou. I expected you to jet inside like you did when you were a kid and Take-san told you scary stories. But it's good to see you take initiative and it's a good time to see what 'your' partner can do. Meet me and Take at the forest gate in five minutes. That's where my father went."

"Are you sure about this Ryou?" Bethany asked quietly. "This thing is probably an Ancient and you don't have a way to fight without that bird. I know you're angry, but think about this."

Ryou gripped her shoulder and squeezed it reassuringly. "You should really pay attention more. Blaze hasn't let me out of her sight since I agreed to be Rekka." He pointed to the sky with his thumb with a slight grin on his face.

Bethany looked up and could see a bird circling around overhead. "Is that?" Ryou nodded.

"Everything will be fine. I promise." He patted her shoulder reassuringly and darted off towards where his father went to.

…...

An older man was walking through the forest as he finally found some fresh tracks in the snow. "I'm finally on the verge of finding the beast. Looks like it went towards the river. He ran through the snow in thick fur covered boots. He wore somewhat light, flexible clothing which would've had any other man freezing in that kind of weather but the cold didn't seem to affect him much. He followed the tracks to the river where the tracks stopped. "Hmmm. Seems like it crossed the river here. The current is fairly powerful so the beast must be stronger than I thought." He pulled out a pair of binoculars and looked across the river where thing would have touched land at. He didn't seen any tracks on the other side. "It's not across the river." He turned around slowly as a mountain of snow seemingly erupted out of nowhere and exploded like a bomb, sending snow everywhere and blasting the old man off of his feet. The man covered his face as he hit the ground, but heard a loud roar echo from where the mountain of snow had been a few seconds before. He uncovered his face and saw the beast he had been hunting for.

It was large, maybe nine to ten feet and covered in shaggy white fur. It was built like a large gorilla with the fur covering most of its face save for its large, fanged teeth and large, red eyes. It roared again and reared back its fists to pummel the man, but he rolled out of the way at a speed of a much younger man before he got to his feet and prepared to face the beast. "Maybe I shouldn't have come out here alone." The beast roared again and jumped towards the man in an attempt to stomp on him, but just like before the old man dodged like a man a third of his age. "Ch. I could try tiring it out, but it looks like it has a vast amount of stamina."

"JII-CHAN!" The old man's ears perked up as the sudden shout got the beast's attention and he turned around, only for a snowball to hit it right between the eyes. The beast became enraged and charged at a boy on a motor scooter, Ryou, as he revved up and charged right back at the beast. "Ryou!?" his 'Jii-chan' wondered in shock.

As the two charged each other, Ryou leaned down and gathered snow in his hand, keeping near perfect balance on his scooter in the snow. The beast roared and pounced and everything suddenly seemed to go into slow motion. Ryou reared his arm back and prepared to throw the snowball but at the last minute stuck his tongue out teasingly at the monster before a small bird swooped in between the two and breathed a breath of hot flames into the beast's face. It was only a fraction of a second in real time and nobody but Ryou and the beast saw it. The phoenix mythic shot off but not before telling Ryou to lure the beast into a nearby clearing. The beast roared in agony and fell to its stomach while holding it's face and screaming.

"That has to hurt. Let me help." Ryou turned the scooter around and revved up hard, making the rear wheel kick up a stream of snow into the beast's face, both cooling it off and pissing it off at the same time. It roared again and tried to grab for Ryou but the young rider shot off just like the phoenix and the monster followed after him.

Yamato, Takemine, and a group of villagers that Yamato had gathered exited the forest just in time to see the monster give chase to Ryou. Yamato was concerned but wanted to check on his father first. "Dad!" He ran over and hugged his father before looking him over to make sure he wasn't injured. "Are you alright? What happened?"

"Your son happened. I tracked the beast here but I underestimated it and it got the jump on me. Ryou suddenly showed up and lured it away. If it hadn't been for the scooter I wouldn't have known who it was. He was wasn't acting like his usual timid self, that's for damn sure."

"Really now?" Yamato looked towards the direction his son had gone into. "Guess we've missed quite a bit since he's been gone."

Ryou swerved around trees in an effort to confuse the beast but any tree that got in its way was just literally shoved aside like a toothpick by the beast. He saw the clearing up ahead and gunned the engine distancing himself further away from it and getting to the center of the clearing just as the beast entered the clearing and roared loudly at him in anger. Ryou got off of the scooter and stood facing the beast before the two charged at one another.

"BLAZE!" Ryou cried as he ran, and at that call said mythic flew up behind Ryou and flew around his waist with a stream of flames trailing behind her. "HENSHIN!" He grabbed her out of the sky and snapped her into the belt and transformed into Rekka just as he got to the monster then slid between its legs in the snow before jumping up behind it and punching it in the middle of the back with a flaming punch. The beast howled in pain again before quickly turning around again, only for Rekka to be gone. It looked to its sides searching for him before a cry from above it alerted it to his location. "Here I am!" Rekka kicked his leg down in an axe kick to the beast's head and brought it down hard before he ran back away from it and got into a runner's stance. "I'll finish this quick." He pulled Blaze's wings back together before snapping them apart again. The phoenix mythic gave a powerful cry as more of her power ran through Ryou's suit and charged his finisher. With a loud war cry he shot forward running far faster than was humanly possible while trailing flames behind him. He ran around the recovering beast created a flaming tornado around it, the heat of the flames lifting it up higher and higher as the tornado quick grew taller. Ryou stopped running and quickly jumped into the sky with a beat of the wings of Rekka, propelling him over the opening of the funnel where the confused beast was just exiting. "HAAAAA!" Another beat of the wings sent Ryou into a nose dive as his foot caught some of the flames from the tornado and glowed with fiery energy. He suddenly twisted his body and slammed his foot into the beast's chest sending the both of them down the funnel and to the ground with enough force to blow away all the flames. When Ryou looked down, breathing hard from the attack, he saw the creature beneath his foot, lifeless, making an imprint in the snow shaped like bird wings.

He turned around and walked calmly back to his scooter as Blaze unhooked herself and Ryou changed back. _"He is clearly not himself right now. I could practically feel his anger through the Rekka armor."_ She watched as Ryou gave her a quick wave and drove off back in the direction he came in as unbeknownst to her and Ryou, the 'lifeless' corpse smiled and dissolved into the snow, leaving no trace of it. When Blaze looked back down she gasped seeing that the Yeti was gone. She looked around searching for any sign of it, but found none.

…...

Yamato, Takemine, and Ryou's grandfather led the group towards the direction that they had seen Ryou go in just in time to see him coming towards them on his scooter. "Ryou!" His father yelled as he ran towards him. "Are you alright?" Ryou skidding calmly to a stop and took off his helmet.

"Yeah Father I'm fine. I lured the monster towards a cliff and it fell off. It almost got me though. Hopefully that's the last we see of it."

"Baka!" His father smacked him upside the head then hugged his son tightly. "It's not like you to do something dangerous like that. What if you had gotten hurt? Your mother would've murdered me!"

Ryou sighed and hugged his father back. In their eyes it may have seen as recklessness, but he had known exactly what he was doing. He couldn't tell them the truth though. "Sorry, maybe I should've thought that through better. It won't happen again."

"Leave the boy be, Yamato. I think he held his own very well."

"Old man Yuuji?" Takemine asked. "It's not like you to take up for Ryou like that. Usually you're the one he's running from. Still, that Ryou was the one to kill it means we've seriously been slacking. Guess your luck's changed, eh Ryou?"

"Wait, what?" Ryou said. Yamato yanked his son over about a foot to the right as a large tree branch fell right where he had been standing. "Thank you Father."

Yamato, Yuuji, and everyone else glared at Takemine as he laughed nervously in embarrassment. "I guess I kinda jinxed it. Well let's go back shall we?" He shot off like a rocket as the others."

"Idiot," said Yuuji.

…...

"So that's what's been going on since you've been away huh? Sounds like your school life came right out of a horror movie. That's even worse than what we've been going through," said Maria in concern. Safe to say that she was surprised about what her son had revealed, but she thought he was joking until Bethany pulled up news pictures of the area and all of the people in the hospital.

"Yeah. Things are dangerous down there and I want to be able to protect myself better. It's time that I finally take on the family training."

Maria and Yuuji looked at him in shock as Yamato laughed heartily. Bethany just looked confused. "Um, did I miss something?"

Yuuji finally found himself and cleared his throat as he began to talk. "Yes. You see, for generations the Okibi family has been trained in a unique form of fighting. It's based around body heat."

"Body heat?"

"Ah. You see, normally human beings all have a core temperature of around 98 degrees, but are greatly affected by external environments. But for those in the Okibi family, they have the ability to adjust to the environment by fully controlling out core body temperature. Hence why Yamato is dressed like it's springtime. If it gets cold he can raise his temperature to keep warm, even melt the snow beneath his feet is need be, and vice versa in warmer weather."

"You can really do that, Yamato? If that's the case then why is Ryou all wrapped up like he lives at the North Pole?"

"Because if you don't learn to use the ability then there's a backlash and our body temperature becomes constantly cold. Almost unbearably so. Ryou didn't really the aptitude or the motivation to do it when he was younger, so he just bundled up like that. He figured it would be easier for him."

"So that was the reason for it. All the students wondered about it, but I never would've thought it was something like that." Bethany had felt bad before for picking on him for his weird taste in clothing, but now that she knew the reason for it she felt even worse.

"Yamato. Let's give him a day to prepare. Your training starts tomorrow. Use today to brush up on what little basics you've learned, and anything...new that you might have come up with."

The next few days of Ryou's training went by slowly. The first day he was put into a room which simulated fierce desert heat with his father and grandfather and forced to fight for several hours as his body adjusted slowly to the raised temperature. The second day he had to do the same in a room that felt like the North Pole. He was so much difficulty he might as well as have not been doing the training at all. Bethany would record whether or not there was any word on them going back to school. It wasn't until the sixth day of his training that he started making some progress. On this day, his father decided to up the ante a bit.

Yamato put a water balloon into each of his hands and smiled at his son's confused expression.

"What exactly am I doing with these?"

"Now that you've gotten better control with controlling your temperature, I think it's time you worked on controlling both raising it and lowering it at the same time. So with the balloon in your right hand I want you to boil the water, and with the one in your left hand I want you to freeze the water."

Ryou gawked at his father. "That's impossible isn't it?"

"Nope. Watch." He took the water balloons from his son's hands and held them in his own. He stood for a minute with the balloons in his hands like was just holding them but suddenly one of them exploded at the same time he dropped the other, shattering like ice as it hit the floor.

Ryou clapped at his father's display and his father handed him two more water balloons. "That was amazing Father. I'll begin working on doing the same." Yamato sighed and ruffled his son's hair. "Father?"

"Look Ryou. You're a polite and respectful kid, always have been. But I think it's also a big flaw that you have. It's important to be like that when the situation calls for it, but you have to be remember to be laid back at times also. How about calling me Dad every once in a while? Start doing what comes natural, because I know you're forcing it a little bit. Not just your training, but how you react with people also."

"How did you know about that?"

"I call Nick every now and then to see how you're doing. I'm saying this so that you can have a few more friends at your school and so you can finally get a girlfriend. You're grandpa's gonna want an heir soon. So you might wanna get on that pronto."

Ryou's eye twitch in embarrassment. "Father! That's the last thing on my mind right now!" Yamato tried to suppress a laugh but failed.

"See how much more laid back when you don't think about it? Listen to that." He pointed to the two balloons. One sounded like the water was bubbling and the other sounded like it was cracking. As soon as Ryou noticed it though the water stopped bowling and the water in the other balloon quickly melted back to its liquid state.

"How did I do that? I wasn't even trying."

"Well the key to achieving control is to just let it happen. You couldn't do it when you were younger because you always stressed too much about failing or what others would think of you. But I feel as though the stuff that's been going on lately has given you a stronger sense of purpose and duty. You may think that you can keep it from me, but I'm your dad. I know you better than anyone. You feel that this is something only you can do right?"

Ryou nodded and looked at water balloon in his hands. "I can't tell you everything, but I can promise you that you'd be proud of me if you knew the truth. Ow!" He winced as he father flicked him in the forehead.

"Idiot. I've been proud of you since the day you were born. Never forget that. No matter what." He started to choke up from his own words and turned away from his son so he wouldn't see the almost cartoonish tears that were streaming down his face. "You go back to your training. I have something in my eye!" He ran off rubbing his eyes like a while bawling dramatically while his son stared after him.

"Why is he such a weirdo? Oh well, back to work." He looked back at his father's still retreating form and grinned. "Thanks Dad."

…...

While Ryou was training Bethany was spending time with Ryou's mom, who was exchanging stories with Takemine who came to visit nearly everyday that Ryou was home. "And so Ryou comes bolting out of the forest screaming his head off and his grandfather jumps out of a tree and tackles him to the ground and berates him from running from a frog that surprised him. Yuuji was so angry at him afterwards that he lifted the kid up and chunked him back into the forest. Could you imagine doing that to a five-year-old like that. Old man Yuuji scares the shit out of most of us." said Takemine as he laughed, not aware that Yuuji was right behind him about ready to blow his top.

"I'll show you anger!" He grabbed Takemine by his shirt, dragged him outside, and threw him into the forest. "Ha! That oughta learn ya!"

"Yuuji, don't you think that was a bit much? He isn't Yamato or Ryou you know." said Maria as Bethany laughed at what just happened.

"Ch. If anything he babied Ryou even more than you did."

"What's the story with Takemine anyway?" Bethany asked. "He's clearly not Japanese like you, Yamato, and Ryou."

"His real name is Timothy. And he moved here with his parents when he was around thirteen years old. They were down on their luck and wanted to start over. You see Ryou is an only child and since Timothy was an older child Ryou was just kind of drawn to him. The nickname Takemine comes from the guitar he brought with him, a Takemine brand that he would play for Ryou whenever he had the chance. Ryou associated the guitar with Timothy and just started calling Takemine all the time. Timothy took it as a nickname to make Ryou happy and it stuck so everyone calls him that. I don't know what things are like at your school, but here everyone sees Ryou as family. And they're always getting onto me about being too hard on him growing up, but since his grandmother died a few years after his birth I just haven't been the same."

"Oh," Bethany looked down suddenly feeling a bit awkward. "You must've loved her very much."

"Heh, that's an understatement. I practically worshiped the ground she walked on. I'm sure you've noticed that Yamato and Ryou have green eyes." Bethany nodded. "Well they get that from my wife, Yukino. All of the Okibi family are born with uncharacteristically green eyes. I'm actually an Okibi by marriage so that's why my eyes are the normal brown. Back in Japan I studied under her father. Yukino used to berate me all the time because the training was difficult for me. But we fell in love after a while and had Yamato. I respected the Okibi name so much that I took it as my own so that it wouldn't die. My brother could continue my family name in my place." He heard something in the wind and looked up at the sky. "Maria, you might want to prepare for a storm. I'm not sure how bad it will be, but I'm sure things will be completely different in the morning."

"I'll go do that. Bethany, do you mind staying here for a bit?"

"Sure," said Bethany with a smile. She was left alone with Yuuji, who seemed unsure of what to say. Bethany had a couple of questions though.

"So what's the story with the whole 'controlling the core' thing that the Okibi family is capable of? Could I possibly learn it?"

Yuuji shook his head and sighed as he took a seat at table. "I'm afraid not. Only those of the Okibi line are able to do it. Although the ability has grown weaker with every generation."

"Why is it that only they can do it?"

"Because...there's a legend in the family that tells of their great ancestor. According to this legend they are descended from a great beast. A great fiery bird that could set the sky on fire with a single flap of its wings. That's why they bear the surname Okibi, blazing fire."

Bethany remembered the first real discussion her and Ryou had ever had. "Ryou mentioned that to me some time ago, but he didn't know anything about the legend. He also said that his first name was a name given to only children in the family. Tell me about your ancestor."

"Well legend has it that hundreds of years ago, when monsters roamed the earth as freely as we humans do now, he suddenly appeared as the guise of human. Though it was said he could take the form of a great firebird. He fell in love with a human and settled down and thus started the Okibi family. That phoenix blood in the veins of the Okibi family is what allows them to control the heat within their bodies, though it's lessened with each generation because that phoenix blood becomes less and less with each generation. So that is all they can do now. I sadly believe that any abilities that they have left will be completely gone within the next few generations. It's sad, but there's nothing that can really be done about it."

"I see. I never would've thought that Ryou's family would have such a cool legend behind it. My family is from a small town in Mississippi so I don't hear stuff like that a lot. Although my sister's friends could probably tell you a few stories. I think I'm going to go check on Ryou. It's getting late and he's not back yet." She moved towards the front door to the house as maria came back with blankets and food.

"I have good timing. Could you take some of this food to him and have some for yourself as well. The blankets are for you in case you feel like staying with him for a while. He shouldn't have too much problem if there's a storm, and from what Yamato tells me he'll probably be spending the night in the dojo. It's equipped with sleeping quarters. Just don't try to tempt Ryou."

"Heh, Ryou wouldn't be into that kind of thing anyway."

"That's what I thought about Yamato as well. Ah, I remember when I first met him. Riding that old scooter with his black trenchcoat flapping in the wind. Oh he got into so much trouble on that thing, him and his gang of bikers. It was like taking a hungry tiger, but I was able to do it. Over and over and over-"

"I'LL BE GOING NOW!" Bethany quickly ran from the house with his face blushing crimson.

…...

Out in the forest a pile of snow was building until it finally changed back into the yeti from before. It cracked its neck and flexed its muscles before laughing to itself. "Feels like I finally have my strength back after fight the Kamen Rider. I'm sure that the jewel is in that village now, so tomorrow I'll destroy it. But first I'll have to increase my strength with a little snow." He raised his arms to sky but a scoff averted his attention. "I suppose I'm not alone," it said in a deep booming voice. "So it's the phoenix," he said as he turned around.

"So that's what you're after. The jewels of the three Ancient clans. A special stone each representing of the clans: Mythics, Mystics, and Horror. Individually they are able to augment the strength of an Ancient as long as the Ancient is of the right clan. But their true power comes out when the three are brought together. So tell me. What is it you wish for?" Said Blaze as she looked down from a nearby tree.

"Psh. As if I would tell my wish to a Mythic that's sided with humans. I, Saruyuki of the Mountains will end you here." Saruyuki swiped his hand in the air and sent snow from the ground flying at the tree. Blaze quickly opened her mouth and breathed flames at the oncoming assault, but the force of the snow was more intense than her stream of flames so she quickly dodge as her fire was overpowered.

"So you are more than just a mindless brute I see. Ryou should still be able to defeat you as easily as before."

"But only if you can get to the boy." He jumped at her at a speed that was rare for a creature his size and swiped Blaze out of the sky and into the ground. "Let's find out if a phoenix can freeze to death." He waved his arms around seemingly randomly, but the snow around Blaze started to whirl around and lifted her off of the ground. She gasped for air as a funnel formed and condensed around her and froze her in a block of ice. And just for good measure he threw her at the foot of a tree and buried her under even more snow. "Now that that's finished." He raised his arms to the sky as the clouds slowly got thicker and the air got even colder. "Get ready for a white out."

**And that is the end of that chapter. If you liked it then please review. If you didn't, then review anyway because if there's any way I can improve this story it would be much appreciated.**


End file.
